Shwartzman retakes championship lead with victory after Ilott retirement

Robert Shwartzman is once again the FIA Formula 2 Championship leader after he cruised to victory in the sprint race at the Belgian Grand Prix.

He sat third after the first safety car restart – which was caused by previous points leader Callum Ilott being hit into a spin at Les Combes on the opening lap – but the seas parted ahead of him as Dan Ticktum and Roy Nissany came to blows; the latter was sent into the barriers and Shwartzman swooped round the pair to take the lead.

The safety car was out again as a result but Ticktum’s front wing damage meant he was unable to challenge the Russian as he drove away from the field and to the simplest of victories.

Ticktum defended as much as he could but he eventually had to yield to Shwartzman’s PREMA teammate Mick Schumacher who came home in second for a one-two for the Italian team.

The next car that made their way past Ticktum was Guanyu Zhou who recovered from a poor start to earn another podium finish for UNI-Virtuosi who are still in a mammoth teams’ title battle with the PREMA team.

Hitech GP were yet again in the thick of the action; very rarely were Nikita Mazepin and Luca Ghiotto too far away from each other on track as the former finished ahead of his more experienced teammate in fourth and fifth to bring home a solid points haul.

Louis Delétraz had looked racy early on but didn’t have the outright pace that those ahead of him had and he had to settle for sixth position. He crossed the line ahead of feature race winner Yuki Tsunoda but the Japanese driver was given a five-second time penalty for the Ilott incident, dropping him to ninth.

Benefiting from his penalty were Christian Lundgaard, who remained in Tsunoda’s wheel tracks all race, and Artem Markelov who finally had a good race after such a difficult 2020 for him and his HWA Racelab team.

Ticktum held on to tenth, but there was no points for him or his teammate Juri Vips who again recovered from the back after stalling on the formation lap, forcing him to start from the pit lane.