Prema’s Mick Schumacher eked out his second FIA European Formula 3 Championship win in Race 2 at Silverstone after starting from the front-row.
The German cleared pole-sitter Motopark’s Fabio Scherer at the start with the Swiss driver under attack from teammate Juri Vips as well as Jonathan Aberdein moved to fourth from Prema’s Marcus Armstrong with HitechGP’s Enaam Ahmed losing two places off the line.
In the front, Schumacher started to stretch his legs as Vips tried hard to pass Scherer for second. Behind, Aberdein maintained track position but Ahmed regained one place against Armstrong to slot into fifth.
With about eight minutes remaining, Vips finally found a way past Scherer at Stowe around the outside to set about in the chase for Schumacher. The Estonian started to set quicker times but the German responded as well.
Eventually, Vips couldn’t make enough impression and handed Schumacher his second European F3 victory in two race weekends after he claimed his first-ever F3 win in the last round at Spa-Francorchamps.
Vips then settled for second from teammate Aberdein with the South African scoring his maiden podium after Scherer dropped out of the race with a suspected issue. Ahmed was close behind Aberdein with only 0.696s separating the two.
Armstrong finished fifth from Prema’s Guanyu Zhou as championship leader Motopark’s Dan Ticktum fought his way up to a solid seventh. The British driver was only 12th after the opening sequence.
He cleared HitechGP’s Alex Palou, Prema’s Ralf Aron & Robert Shwartzman and Carlin’s Sacha Fenestraz to gain five places. He is under investigation for the contact with Aron during the move and also for allegedly gaining an advantage during Fenestraz’s move.
The Carlin driver finished eighth from Shwartzmand and Aron in the Top 10 as Palou missed on a points finish after running in the Top 10 early on. There were multiple battles outside the points scoring positions in a thrilling race.
Position 11-22: Palou, Ben Hingeley, Ferdinand Habsburg, Sebastian Fernandez, Jehan Daruvala, Artem Petrov, Marino Sato, Keyvan Andres, Sophia Floersch, Petru Florescu, Ameya Vaidyanathan and Charles Leong. DNF: Nikita Troitskiy and Scherer.
