Schumacher heads F2 practice after fiery end for Sato

As he attempts to properly launch his title bid, Mick Schumacher topped the FIA Formula 2 practice session as he and PREMA showed signs of big improvement.

It was a difficult weekend all round a week ago for the Italian squad and they needed a good start to forget the troubles that haunted them, and with Schumacher at the top and championship leader Robert Shwartzman fourth, they’ve certainly done that.

Last week’s feature race winner Nikita Mazepin had gone four tenths clear of the German but had his time deleted due to track limits at Stowe and was classified thirteenth.

Louis Delétraz was very impressive in ending just 0.031s off the pace of Schumacher in second and almost two tenths clear of last week’s sprint race winner Dan Ticktum.

It was, in fact, a really promising session for DAMS with Ticktum’s teammate Sean Gelael fifth ahead of Carlin’s Yuki Tsunoda who continued to show his speed.

It wasn’t such a good session for Trident’s Marino Sato who had to leap from his car as the rear went up in flames during a dramatic engine failure.

Home hero Jack Aitken will be happy with seventh and with being ahead of Jehan Daruvala, Guanyu Zhou and Christian Lundgaard who completed the top ten.

Callum Ilott is Shwartzman’s closest challenger for the title at the moment but he could only manage eleventh having qualified on the front row a week ago.