Sette Camara leads Markelov in F2 practice at Monza
Carlin’s Sergio Sette Camara finished top of the timesheet in a Formula 2 practice session at Monza truncated by damp track conditions.
After Formula 1’s FP1 running partially dried the track following the early morning rainfall, the F2 field found a circuit that was too wet for slicks but too dry for wet tyre running at the start of its practice session.
As a result, mileage was significantly limited early on. With a third of the session remaining, all 20 cars emerged on slick tyres to begin to post representative times.
With track conditions improving throughout the final minutes, Sette Camara vaulted to the top of the timesheet late on with a 1m33.810s benchmark.
His time was set moments after Russian Time’s Artem Markelov had taken top spot – who was edged out of first by 0.048s.
A spin at Turn 1 for Markelov moments later effectively ended the session with a minute remaining, as he beached his car on the sausage kerb.
Championship contender Alexander Albon was third for DAMS. His main rivals George Russell and Lando Norris – who currently sit first and second in the championship – had their laps compromised by traffic and ended up seventh and ninth respectively.
Norris was particularly affected, having two of his hotlaps blocked late in the session. He first encountered Nicholas Latifi, Jack Aitken and Russell vying for track position at the Parabollica before being hindered on the exit of Ascari one lap later.
Markelov’s team-mate Tadasuke Makino largely managed to avoid traffic en route to fourth and was one of the earliest to make the switch to slick tyres. It is the highest Makino has finished in any session this season.
Campos Racing’s Luca Ghiotto briefly led the times but ended up in fifth ahead of Charouz Racing System’s Antonio Fuoco.
Dorian Boccolacci, who is only competing in his second weekend in F2, ended the session in an impressive 10th after having topped the times early on.
Nyck de Vries was the only driver to not post a lap time. He suffered a technical glitch, shortly after emerging on his slick tyres, which sent the car into safe mode. He crawled back to the pits where his Prema Racing team inspected the car, but he did not return to the circuit.
De Vries enters this weekend having won the previous two feature races and secured his first F2 pole position during last weekend’s round in Belgium.