FIA Formula 2: Ilott and Schumacher on podium for FDA. Shwartzman in the points again

Callum Ilott second on Ghiotto’s tail, Mick Schumacher third at the end of an attacking race. Shwartzman picks up plenty of points and Armstrong and Alesi are also in the top ten.

The FDA (Ferrari Driver Academy) students continue to make their mark on the FIA Formula 2 championship. After Robert Shwartzman won yesterday’s Feature Race with Mick Schumacher third, this morning’s Sprint Race ended in a second place for Callum Ilott (UNI-Virtuosi Racing) and another third for Schumacher, who finished ahead of Prema team-mate Robert Shwartzman, who picked up 8 points, to keep his championship lead. The FDA has thus taken nine podium finishes from 6 races.

Tricky track. All the cars started on the Medium tyre even though the track was still damp off the racing line, which made life tricky. However, Callum Ilott starting from pole, after finishing eighth yesterday, took the lead ahead of the two Hitech Grand Prix drivers Luca Ghiotto and Nikita Mazepin and Louis Deletraz (Charouz Racing System), Dan Ticktum (DAMS) Mick Schumacher, Robert Shwartzman and Giuliano Alesi (HWA Racelab).

Tyre change. The first half of the race went smoothly for the front runners, while further back, after a difficult race yesterday, Marcus Armstrong did well to come up from 19th to chase the top ten runners after a handful of laps. Soon, many teams realised it would be impossible to get to the finish without changing tyres and thus begun a round of pit stops which reset the order.

Closing stages. With 10 laps to go, Ghiotto had a comfortable 20 second lead over Alesi and 38 over Ilott who was the first driver to have pitted. Behind him came Deletraz and Mazepin, then Schumacher and Shwartzman. Ghiotto used all his experience to go all the way to the flag on the same set of tyres and finished just 6 tenths of a second ahead of Ilott, who was on the podium for the second time this season. For the second day running, Mick Schumacher was on third with Shwartzman fourth. Armstrong was ninth and Alesi tenth. Robert leads the series, 18 points ahead of Ilott after three rounds and six races. The next round is at Silverstone in a fortnight.