A tantalising second race from Monza, saw Marcos Siebert win the 2016 Italian F4 Championship. Meanwhile, rookie driver Sebastian Fernandez fought back to steal his maiden win.
After the disaster of race one, Fernandez made a strong start with second place Juri Vips following him through. Behind, the action was once again on the championship leaders as Mick Schumacher leaped up to third before rival Raul Guzman switched back a few corners later.
Elsewhere, incidents with Federico Malvestiti, Artem Petrov and Juan Manuel Correa dropped them to the back. This was particularly bad for the American driver who lost his chance to fight for the rookie title. To make matters worse, he was later given a drive through penalty.
Vips was not prepared to hang around and after two laps was ahead of the ailing Fernandez. As Schumacher and Guzman continued their battle, the title leader Siebert slowly gained ground, eventually working himself into fifth.
Vips’ overtake hadn’t been entirely clean with both himself and Fernandez getting a warning for track limits. Guzman knew that he couldn’t afford to lose any time or places and when Fernandez and Schumacher held each other up, he took the opportunity to slide through into second.
Soon Diego Bertonelli joined the six car battle for the lead as the action was far from settled. Over the coming laps, Guzman, Fernandez and Vips tussled up front as Schumacher defended from Siebert and Bertonelli.
With five minutes remaining as Guzman and Fernandez continued their South American battle. Though there was disaster for the Prema Powerteam drivers. Vips fell back as Schumacher picked up damage on the front wing, pitting as a result.
In the latter third of the race, Ian Geoffrey Rodriguez caught up to the fight for fourth though was unable to do anything about Siebert.
The thriller finally concluded with Fernandez crossing the line first, ahead of Guzman and Vips. Despite the valiant effort from the Venezuelan, he ultimately lost out on the title battle as other results didn’t go his way. As for Vips, he wraps up the rookie crown.
Fourth was Bertonelli as fifth place Siebert picked up the 2016 title. Sixth was Rodriguez, as a last lap battle resulted in Kush Maini beating Leornard Hoogenboom who gained a position from his starting place. As for Schumacher, he’ll be gutted to have lost out after an avoidable incident.
