The reliability curse strikes
Roy Nissany was back doing F1 free practice duties for Williams for the second time this season. He was faster than Sebastian Vettel in the Ferrari. Four days later, I still don’t know how to process that information, so let’s just move on.
Practice: The reliability curse strikes Samaia
Practice at the Temple of Speed is all about testing the limits. Shwartzman tested the limits of the turn one braking zone, when he missed it and went straight on down the escape road. Drugovich tested the limits of the tow effect, after almost running into the back of Nissany at the end of the straight. Everyone tested the track limits, with gravel being thrown all over the road and track times being deleted left, right and centre (aka turn 11). Samaia tested the limits of his car, which broke in a massive plume of smoke, causing a Virtual Safety Car.
At the end of the session, Tsunoda was fastest, with Lundgaard in second and Mazepin third.
Qualifying: The reliability curse strikes the barriers (it was Schumacher actually)
In true Monza-chaos style, before qualifying even began, Ilott was told “just sit and wait, we don’t want to be the first out,” and it wasn’t long before people were complaining about the traffic, “Shwartzman blocked me!” grumbled Armstrong, shortly before he also had his lap time deleted for exceeding track limits.
After the first set of qualifying runs, Ticktum decided he didn’t want any part in Monza chaos, telling his team “we have to make sure we’re at the front, to avoid any yellow flags,” which turned out to be very wise, in theory, although in practice his lap was not good and he ended up only in tenth.
As Tsunoda and Lundgaard fought it out for pole position, Ilott suddenly came from nowhere, with a speedy lap, to take provisional pole. Classic Ilott. Also from nowhere (although foreseen by Ticktum) came Schumacher, doing a Vettel and losing it before crashing into the barrier, causing a red flag. “I’m sorry,” came his forlorn voice, and with that qualifying was suddenly over, ready or not. It was Ilott on pole, Tsunoda second, Ghiotto third and Lundgaard in fourth. All the extra Monza practice in the F1 car paid off for Nissany, who qualified fifth (his first time inside the top 10), while championship leader Shwartzman was only 16th and Zhou was 17th.
Matsushita qualified in 13th place, which wasn’t unlucky enough for him as he still had to take his grid penalty from the Belgian Feature Race. It apparently was not enough that his actions had caused him to crash so badly that he missed the entirety of the next race. You can’t just dodge penalties that easily.
Feature Race: The reliability curse strikes Mazepin
Ilott made a good start, while Ghiotto made a classic Ghiotto (i.e. bad) start, along with Tsunoda, and everyone else’s starts just paled into insignificance against Schumacher launching himself from seventh to second before even reaching the first corner. That left Schumacher in between Ilott in the lead and Lundgaard in third.
While Schumacher chased down Ilott, and Ilott complained about how gravelly it was on track, Lundgaard, Tsunoda and Ghiotto were three wide, battling it out over third place. Despite Ghiotto being pretty tough, Lundgaard was tougher, and emerged the winner, as Ghiotto ended up flying down the escape road. Cue lots of swearing on the radio and no actual words. Tsunoda carried on attempting to have a go at Lundgaard, but Lundgaard was just not having any of it.
Up front, leader Ilott went to take his mandatory pit stop, but it was terrible, as he stalled, leaving the mechanics frantically scrambling around for the big car-starting stick. It took AGES and he came out back on track almost dead last, except for Samaia who is the resident actual dead-last driver and contractually obliged to take that role, apart from when his car breaks down. This was all good news for Schumacher, who was now easily in the lead, as well as championship rival Shwartzman, who was still trundling around the back somewhere. The pit stops also went well for Ghiotto, who managed to overtake Tsunoda in the process.
Things were going less well for Ghiotto’s Hitech teammate Mazepin, who suddenly had a problem with his car and was driving very slowly, before magically getting going again having lost a load of places, before then giving up and going to the pits to retire. Meanwhile, the MP Motorsport teammates, Drugovich and Matsushita were at it again, fighting over 15th place, and just about managing not to crash into each other (again). The MP guys are going to have a few extra grey hairs after this season.
UNI-Virtuosi were having a better time. After his disaster of a pit stop, Ilott was now on a real charge to try to recover some points. Teammate Zhou was also on a charge, despite being on a different tyre strategy, recovering from a bad qualifying and a bad start where he got barged off track by Armstrong (for which Armstrong received a five-second time penalty). All of a sudden, having both been basically at the back at some point during the race, Ilott was now fifth, even overtaking Shwartzman who was clearly having a full struggle weekend stuck trying to hold onto eighth, and Zhou was sixth.
At the front, Schumacher was three seconds ahead of everyone, while the toughest of the tough Ghiotto and Lundgaard were fighting over second place. Ghiotto eventually barged his way through, “Am I the only one who saw him squeezing me a bit tight?” Lundgaard complained, presumably about Ghiotto’s overtake and not some illicit cross-corona-bubble hug they had before the race.
In the last couple of laps, Zhou, who was on softer tyres, overtook Ilott, making it a journey from 17th to 5th, and Ticktum passed Shwartzman (and Delétraz), pushing Shwartzman down to the most miserable of places in 9th, aka just missing out on reverse-grid pole. Schumacher, however, took his first F2 Feature Race win and first win of 2020, launching himself fully back into the fight for Ferrari Driver Academy supremacy, sorry, I mean the FIA Formula 2 World Championship.
Second-place Ghiotto was actually smiling, while third-place Lundgaard said that after the last two awful weekends “we need to be happy with where we are today,” just that no one told his face, although on the podium he did seem to be happy, having a good inspection of his trophy even before he was told he could pick it up.
At the press conference, everyone raved about Schumacher’s win (everyone, obviously not including Ghiotto and Lundgaard), his amazing start and his dad. Mick said his win obviously felt great and his starts are down to proper procedure and practice. He then spent the rest of the many hours of press conference being asked how special it was to win at Monza, and repeatedly answering, “every win is special”. Lundgaard managed to look visibly pained by the length of the press conference, despite the mask, and no one wanted to talk to Ghiotto. Mick ended by running out of ways to answer the same question multiple times and so talked instead about a squirrel he had seen. The other drivers had not seen any squirrels.
Sprint Race: The reliability curse strikes… everyone
Delétraz was on pole for the Sprint Race (yay!) and ever the optimist, “we could win.” Second-place Ticktum also managed some optimism, “it could be worse,” and Ilott was, well, Ilott, “you never know with Monza.” Before the race had even begun, Piquet (in 12th) was told by his engineer, “be aggressive… good luck”. However, it was Delétraz who actually needed the good luck, as he got beaten off the start by Ticktum, who then instantly proceeded to pull away into the lead, while everyone just squabbled behind him, apart from Tsunoda, whose car broke on lap two.
Heeding his engineer’s advice, Piquet was indeed being aggressive, and was somehow in a terrifying three-way battle with Ghiotto and Aitken over seventh place, during which Aitken was lucky not to get a puncture and Ghiotto and Piquet both got broken front wings. Too aggressive Pedro. While Ghiotto got black & orange flagged, forcing him to come in and fix his damaged car, Piquet was inexplicably allowed to just carry on, while bits of his wing fell all over the track. Also pitting were Markelov and Armstrong, but who even knows what was going on there, but it presumably wasn’t good and they were left at the back, except for Tsunoda, who had un-retired and was three laps down.
Car issues also befell Zhou, who had been mixing it up with Schumacher and Lundgaard over fourth place, but alas, he was also suddenly going slowly, left to trundle round the Temple of Speed at no speed at all, trying to just get back to the pits. He joined Tsunoda, who was also back in the pits.
Delétraz, in second, wasn’t having car reliability issues, but he was sill having issues, as Ilott and Lundgaard soon came cruising up to pass him, despite his pretty robust defensive moves. Meanwhile, Race Control had finally thought enough was enough, as Piquet lost another bit of front wing off his car and he was black & orange flagged to come in and get it all fixed, just as Tsunoda was heading back out again, only six laps down.
Just to add some more drama, Nissany then hit Drugovich (good thing he probably doesn’t have any trips booked to Brazil any time soon), spinning Drugovich around and out of the race. Nissany promptly received a ten-second time penalty and the Virtual Safety Car was deployed, which must have been a relief to Ticktum who was now four seconds ahead and living in constant fear of a full Safety Car.
At the end of the VSC, Delétraz made a lightening start, almost gaining his place back from Lundgaard, but Lundgaard managed to hold on, with the battle giving Schumacher a chance to catch up, despite living with what had now become a pretty uncomfortable looking vibration caused by an earlier lock up. Sadly, as Delétraz then learned for himself, the law of Monza is that every time you fail to overtake someone, the person behind gets to overtake you instead, and so Schumacher did, taking fourth place on the last lap.
Ticktum crossed the line to win, sounding very chill on the radio, before parking up in a gravel trap as instructed by his team, “never a dull moment in my career,” he commented. Sadly he didn’t have time to look for squirrels on his walk back, as the medical car came to pick him up and take him to the podium. Post-race he seemed anxious about whether he would keep the win, reiterating several times that “I crossed the line first, so in my mind I won.” He apparently hadn’t had the easiest time during the race, despite looking like he massively dominated the whole thing, while second-placed Ilott said “it wasn’t easy,” despite having made it look pretty easy. Lundgaard, in third place, did actually look a little bit happier, especially on the podium where he had another little trophy inspection. Clearly a man who likes his trophies.
Post-post-race, Ticktum was disqualified for not having enough fuel left to provide the mandatory sample. DAMS hit out, saying this was caused by a fuel leak which was an issue that F2 had been aware of with these cars for several races. I imagine that after this weekend there could be a few other teams who would be happy to get on a “let’s complain about the reliability of the cars” bandwagon.
The reliability curse strikes the championship standings
After Ilott and Shwartzman having reliably been the top two in the championship standings for weeks, Monza has thrown all that out the window. Ilott benefitted from Ticktum’s Sprint Race disqualification, taking the win from him and a nice handful of points, moving Callum back up to the top of the championship table (149 points). Schumacher also benefitted, being promoted to third in the race, making it another double podium for Mr. Consistent and moving him up to second place (143 points) in the championship. Another disappointing weekend for Shwartzman drops him down to third (140 points). Tsunoda is fourth (123 points) and Lundgaard is back in the game (not that I ever thought he was out but some people seemed to have forgotten about him…) in fifth (116 points).