Callum Ilott put in a sublime performance to take victory in race two of the weekend at the Hockenheimring as Prema Powerteam locked out the podium and clinched the Teams’ championship.
Starting from pole position, Ilott held onto the lead at the start of the race, and once the initial challenge from team-mate Maximilian Günther faded, he was able to draw away from the German, ultimately clinching victory by an impressive margin of 11.339 seconds.
Günther finished second despite suffering an early flat-spot on his front-left tyre, with the German doing more than enough to hold off Guan Yu Zhou, who completed the podium despite late race attention from race one winner Joel Eriksson.
Eriksson’s fight-back was not helped by an extended battle for fourth place with Jake Hughes, who was resolute in defence before the Hitech Grand Prix driver ultimately fell behind the Motopark driver heading into turn two after around half distance.
Hughes immediately attempted to attack back but was unable to capture the place back, and once the Swede pulled a gap, the Briton was forced to return to defending his position, this time from both Pedro Piquet of Van Amersfoort Racing and Hitech Grand Prix’s Tadasuke Makino.
Piquet was the first to find his way ahead of Hughes, while Makino also made a pass on the penultimate lap, but ultimately Hughes reclaimed fifth as both the Brazilian and Japanese racers were handed five-second time penalties for being incorrectly positioned on the starting grid.
The penalties not only promoted Hughes to fifth but also Hitech Grand Prix’s Nikita Mazepin to sixth, with Piquet falling to seventh, while Jehan Daruvala of Carlin moved up to eighth ahead of Makino and Ralf Aron, who claimed the final point on offer for Hitech Grand Prix.
Lando Norris, who was crowned champion in race one earlier in the day, could only finish eleventh after running wide at the hairpin on lap one and dropping out of the points. He found David Beckmann a tough nut to crack and only found a way ahead of the German on the penultimate lap, but by then the damage had been done and he was unable to score points for only the sixth time in twenty-nine races.
Hockenheimring Race 2 Result
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