Callum Ilott qualified on pole for Saturday’s Formula 2 feature race at Monza after a crash for fellow Ferrari junior Mick Schumacher brought an early end to qualifying.
Virtuosi’s Ilott, who is looking to claw back a 10-point deficit in the title race after a bad previous round at Spa, was fastest in Friday’s session, while championship leader Robert Shwartzman qualified a lowly 16th.
Schumacher had been fastest after drivers had completed the first of two runs, the Prema driver setting a time of 1m32.277s, to displace early pacesetter Christian Lundgaard by just under 0.02s. ART’s Lundgaard responded on his second run to go top again by a tiny margin, but was immediately displaced by Friday practice pacesetter Yuki Tsunoda.
But Ilott, who had been sitting seventh-fastest after the first runs, jumped to the top of the time-sheets with a time of 1m31.929 with the help of a slipstream from MP Motorsport’s Felipe Drugovich.
Before anyone had a chance to challenge Ilott’s time, Mick Schumacher crashed into the barriers after losing control of his car in the middle of the Ascari chicane. Schumacher was unharmed, but the incident caused the red flags to be brought out, with the session not restarted.
Carlins’ Tsunoda, who is currently third in the standings after winning the previous feature race at Spa, finished second fastest, 0.03s behind Ilott. Hitech’s Luca Ghiotto was third fastest thanks to a late flyer, with Lundgaard ending up in fourth.
Roy Nissany qualified an impressive fifth for Trident, having enjoyed a second Formula 1 outing with Williams in Friday morning’s first practice session, ahead of the second Hitech of Nikita Mazepin.
Despite his crash, Schumacher will start the feature race from seventh on the grid, ahead of Carlin’s Jehan Daruvala. Louis Deletraz set the ninth-fastest time for Charouz, with Dan Ticktum pipping DAMS team-mate Juri Vips to 10th place.
Guanyu Zhou was another front runner to have a disappointing session, qualifying one place lower than Shwartzman in 17th for Virtuosi.
Qualifying result
| Pos | Driver | Team | Gap |
| 1 | Callum Ilott | Virtuosi | 1m31.929s |
| 2 | Yuki Tsunoda | Carlin | +0.030s |
| 3 | Luca Ghiotto | Hitech | +0.198s |
| 4 | Christian Lundgaard | ART | +0.271s |
| 5 | Roy Nissany | Trident | +0.297s |
| 6 | Nikita Mazepin | Hitech | +0.338s |
| 7 | Mick Schumacher | Prema | +0.348s |
| 8 | Jehan Daruvala | Carlin | +0.379s |
| 9 | Louis Deletraz | Charouz | +0.413s |
| 10 | Dan Ticktum | DAMS | +0.444s |
| 11 | Juri Vips | DAMS | +0.452s |
| 12 | Felipe Drugovich | MP Motorsport | +0.483s |
| 13 | Nobuharu Matsushita | MP Motorsport | +0.491s |
| 14 | Marino Sato | Trident | +0.605s |
| 15 | Marcus Armstrong | ART | +0.663s |
| 16 | Robert Shwartzman | Prema | +0.668s |
| 17 | Guanyu Zhou | Virtuosi | +0.673s |
| 18 | Pedro Piquet | Charouz | +0.681s |
| 19 | Jack Aitken | Campos | +0.694s |
| 20 | Giuliano Alesi | HWA | +0.697s |
| 21 | Artem Markelov | HWA | +1.382s |
| 22 | Guilherme Samaia | Campos | +1.572s |
Feature image credit: @fia_f2 official twitter
