Norman Nato stormed to an impressive Sprint Race win this morning around the high-speed circuit of Monza. Taking advantage of a messy start, he built an unassailable lead over the rest of the pack that was too big to be closed down. Pierre Gasly added points to his championship lead – now 10 points clear in the lead – with a second place finish as Antonio Giovinazzi added more joy to Prema’s weekend by finishing off the podium.
Polesitter Mitch Evans, once again, did not have the best of starts. A lot of wheel spin allowed Jordan King to demote Evans from the lead on the run down to Turn 1. Evans lost a few more places, dropping to P4 where he had some close contact with Luca Ghiotto but both of them got through the first corner unscathed. The real winner was Norman Nato who got from fifth to first by the first chicane. He was followed through by Jordan King for second and Pierre Gasly, who felt his win was stolen yesterday after the mistake with the safety car, behind them for third.
But the first lap drama continued down to the second chicane where the close fighting Evans and Ghiotto were taken out of the race. They had been fighting cleanly for fourth when Oliver Rowland tagged the back of Ghiotto, spinning him round and off the track. Evans was taken out by Gustav Malja as the Swedish driver made a bold but stupid move over the kerbs and spun Evans out. Rowland and Malja were both handed 10-second time penalties for their actions and the Virtual Safety Car came out to clear away the two cars.
On the restart, Nato made a determined effort to extend his lead on the pack, trying to retrieve the podium he felt was taken from him in yesterday’s feature race. He managed to extend his lead, with Gasly being held up trying to pass his teammate King for second. Gasly managed to get passed King but he could not find the pace to draw in the gap that Nato had built in the 21-lap race.
Antonio Giovinazzi had a brilliant start from eighth on the grid, taking advantage of those starting poorly around him to jump up the grid on the start. By the end of lap one, the Italian was up to fourth and looking keen to gain more positions up the grid. As his day went brilliantly it was the opposite for King who struggled to keep the front-runners behind him. After a few laps of battling, Giovinazzi managed to get up onto the bottom step of the podium.
Malja finished the race fourth, but due to his penalty for taking Evans out of the race, he dropped out of the points to P9 by two-tenths of a second. This promoted King to fourth and Artem Markelov to fifth position. The most enthralling race in the closing stages was between Alex Lynn and Nobuharu Matsushita for sixth position. The pair had a close battle throughout the last 10 laps of the race, with Lynn behind and pushing Matsushita hard. But Matsushita was defending brilliantly and Lynn could not find a way passed. It was a desperate dash to the line that saw Lynn take sixth position by a fraction of his front wing, demoting the ART driver to seventh.
Nicolas Latifi took the final points position in eighth.
Sergey Sirotkin was the only other retiree of the race, with his car failing within the first few laps at the first chicane. Raffaele Marciello also lost out on an opportunity to rectify the result from yesterday as he stalled on the grid before the formation lap. He was able to get the car out into the race but he had to start from the pit lane, ruining any chance he had of scoring points today.
