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PIASTRI BANKS POINTS WITH SECOND IN BAKU FEATURE

Oscar Piastri banks point with second in Baku feature race - Photo: Motorsport Images

By Dan McCarthy

Estonian Juri Vips scored his second FIA Formula 2 Championship victory of the weekend, as Aussie Oscar Piastri finished second despite being handed a 5s penalty.

Vips took the lead from his pole-sitting teammate Liam Lawson into Turn 1 and never looked back. He survived an early race safety car restart and controlled the race out front to take his second successive victory.

Vips took the win by 6.1s, but on the road he was hounded by Piastri all the way to the finish.

Vips knew that Piastri had been handed a five second post-race penalty for an unsafe release during the compulsory pitstop sequence, and this allowed the Hitech Grand Prix driver to bring the car home untroubled and take the victory.

Despite the penalty, Piastri was classified in second as he built up an 11.5s margin over his Prema Racing teammate Robert Shwartzman in third.

Shwartzman came from 10th on the grid up to third, however he was unable to close up to the leading duo.

Notably, championship leader Guanyu Zhou finished outside of the points. The Chinese driver lacked pace all race long and by the end fell to 13th, allowing Piastri to close the championship margin down to just five points.

Brazilian Drugovich and Ralph Boschung stayed out of trouble and finished the 28-lap affair in fourth and fifth respectively.

Pole sitter Liam Lawson overcame a penalty to finish the race in sixth position. After losing the lead to his Hitech teammate Vips into Turn 1, Lawson made an aggressive defensive move to cover off Theo Pourchaire on the run to Turn 2.

The stewards deemed the block to be over the limit and handed the New Zealander a 10s penalty to be served in his pit stop.

Jehan Daruvala finished in seventh ahead of a furious Dan Ticktum who was also dealt a 10s penalty.

Ticktum collided with Theo Pourchaire and Marcus Armstrong on the opening lap and saw both of the other drivers wiped out of the race, however the Briton felt he was not to blame.

Some little consolation for Ticktum was that he picked up two bonus points for setting the fastest lap of the race.

Alpine academy driver Christian Lundgaard and German Lirim Zendeli rounded out the point scoring finishers.

Jack Aitken missed out on points by just 0.8s, he pipped Charouz Racing System driver David Beckmann to the line.

Zhou was 13th ahead of Richard Verschoor, Marino Sato, Roy Nissany and Bent Viscaal who rounded out the 17 finishers on the lead lap.

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