Dan Ticktum cruised to his second Formula 2 victory of the season in the sprint race at Monza, as Callum Ilott finished second to move clear of Robert Shwartzman in the drivers’ standings.
Having lined up second on the grid courtesy of a seventh-place finish in Saturday’s feature race, Ticktum made a brilliant start to clear polesitter Louis Deletraz on the entry to the first chicane.
After taking the lead, Ticktum slowly but steadily built a gap over his rivals, moving two seconds clear of Deletraz by lap 10 of 21.
Deletraz then fell into the clutches of Virtuosi’s Callum Ilott and ART man Christian Lundgaard, the duo clearing the Charouz driver within two laps of each other to demote him outside the podium positions.
Ilott and Lundgaard however could do little about Ticktum after passing Deletraz, the ex-Red Bull junior expanding his lead to the best part of three seconds.
When MP Motorsport’s Felipe Drugovich stopped at the exit of the first chicane after being pitched into a spin by Williams Formula 1 test driver Roy Nissany, there was a risk that his advantage could be negated by the safety car.
However, the race control chose to deploy only a virtual safety car instead, allowing Ticktum to retain the lead which he held until the chequered flag was dropped at the end of lap 21.
Ilott held on to second, despite Lundgaard closing within half a second of him on the final lap of the race.
Saturday race winner Mick Schumacher jumped up to fourth early on, but locked up heading into the first chicane while defending against Guanyu Zhou, dropping to sixth.
However, he managed to recover the lost positions, overtaking Deletraz two laps from the finish to finish as the top Prema driver in fourth.
Deletraz was eventually classified fifth after successfully fending off the second Prema of Shwartzman on the final tour.
Carlin driver Jehan Daruvala finished in the points for the second race in a row in seventh, ahead of Campos driver Jack Aitken, who completed the points scorers.
Nikita Mazepin finished ninth for Hitech, while Red Bull junior Juri Vips (DAMS) secured the best finish of his short F2 career in 10th.
Red Bull/Honda protege Yuki Tsunoda and Zhou retired from the race due to unrelated technical problems, joining Drugovich in the list of retirees.
Race results:
Cla | # | Driver | Team | Gap |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 2 | Dan Ticktum | DAMS | |
2 | 4 | Callum Ilott | UNI-Virtuosi | 4.600 |
3 | 6 | Christian Lundgaard | ART Grand Prix | 5.200 |
4 | 20 | Mick Schumacher | Prema Powerteam | 6.600 |
5 | 11 | Louis Deletraz | Charouz Racing System | 7.000 |
6 | 21 | Robert Shwartzman | Prema Powerteam | 7.300 |
7 | 8 | Jehan Daruvala | Carlin | 10.900 |
8 | 9 | Jack Aitken | Campos Racing | 16.900 |
9 | 24 | Nikita Mazepin | HitechGP | 18.700 |
10 | 1 | Jüri Vips | DAMS | 19.600 |
11 | 22 | Roy Nissany | Trident | 30.800 |
12 | 14 | Nobuharu Matsushita | MP Motorsport | 31.000 |
13 | 17 | Giuliano Alesi | HWA AG | 32.300 |
14 | 23 | Marino Sato | Trident | 33.100 |
15 | 10 | Guilherme Samaia | Campos Racing | 41.700 |
16 | 25 | Luca Ghiotto | HitechGP | 1’00.000 |
17 | 16 | Artem Markelov | HWA AG | |
18 | 12 | Pedro Piquet | Charouz Racing System | |
19 | 5 | Marcus Armstrong | ART Grand Prix | |
15 | Felipe Drugovich | MP Motorsport | ||
7 | Yuki Tsunoda | Carlin | ||
3 | Guanyu Zhou | UNI-Virtuosi | ||
View full results |
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