Ilott takes back-to-back poles after smart strategy call

FIA Formula 2 Championship leader Callum Ilott secured his second successive pole position at the Spanish Grand Prix ahead of title rival Robert Shwartzman.

The UNI-Virtuosi driver was second quickest after the opening laps of the session but the team chose to run ‘in the gap’ to get their man a clearer track.

Ilott delivered. The Brit went ballistic and set a time almost half a second quicker than anything that had gone prior and although the rest improved later in the session, they weren’t able to topple the Ferrari Academy driver.

It was a fellow young buck of the Prancing Horse stable who was closest, Shwartzman has struggled in qualifying previously but he finally put his issues to bed to take a front row slot on tomorrow’s feature race grid.

Ilott’s teammate Guanyu Zhou similarly ran out of sequence to the rest; he waited to do his first run and left it to the very end to have a second attempt, he looked on course for a front row start but lost too much time in the final sector and settled for third.

Felipe Drugovich is becoming something of a qualifying specialist and he proved so again with fourth ahead of Shwartzman’s PREMA teammate Mick Schumacher.

Those two collided in last week’s sprint race handing victory to Yuki Tsunoda who put his Carlin alongside the German on the third row as he seeks to impress Helmut Marko and Red Bull with an F1 seat a possibility as soon as 2021.

Jack Aitken looked to do his Campos team proud at their home race and seventh seemed to do exactly that as he edged out practice pace-setter Dan Ticktum.

Nikita Mazepin has been more suited to the races so far in 2020, especially in feature races where he has made the alternate strategy work on multiple occasions. He will start ninth ahead of Louis Delétraz.