Charles Milesi took a dominant victory around the streets of Monte-Carlo to take his second race victory in the Formula Renault 2.0 Eurocup series after winning in the last round at Silverstone as well.
Milesi won by 1.6 s over Saturday’s race winner Alex Peroni in a comfortable performance for the young Frenchman. The win has leap-frogged the Frenchman into third place in the championship fight as he executed the perfect race around the principality.
Behind the top two were Victor Martins, who jumped championship leader Ye Yifei on the run down into Ste. Devote on the opening lap, and he held third place from then on to claim his second podium finish of the weekend. The Chinese driver meanwhile had a consistent weekend with two fourth placed finishes, outscoring all his championship rivals throughout the weekend.
Second in the championship, Christian Lundgaard, had another lonely race on his way to finishing fifth after Lorenzo Colombo retired from the race on the second lap at the Nouvelle Chicane, with a mechanical gremlin plagued his efforts on morning of the Monaco GP . Despite losing out points-wise relative to Yifei, Lundgaard is some 16 points clear of third-placed driver Milesi in the standings.
Neil Verhagen was unable to get the better of Max Defourny again today, with the Belgian making up for his error-prone ways yesterday with a strong sixth placed finish, while Verhagen was able to pass double race winner Max Fewtrell for seventh position. He finished just ahead of Logan Sargeant, who had a difficult weekend after struggling during qualifying on Friday morning. Thomas Maxwell completed the points scorers for the JD Motorsport squad.
At the mid-way stage of the race, Thomas Neubauer went for a lunge on Mexican racer, Axel Matus, at the Lowes Hairpin, only for Matus’s race to be ended there, and Neubauer to end up in a spin. Also caught up in the accident was Brazilian rookie, Christian Hahn, who was following close behind and could not avoid the accident. Both Neubauer and Hahn lost a huge amount of time in the incident, and finished P23 and P24 respectively. The other retiree was Sami Taoufik who had contact at the start of the race, which meant he pulled into the pits at the end of the opening lap.
So as we leave Monte-Carlo, Ye leads the championship by fourteen points over Lundgaard, but after scoring sixty-eight out of a possible seventy-five points in the past three races, Milesi has established himself as a true championship contender heading to the Red Bull Ring in eight weeks time.
