PIASTRI RETAINS F2 CHAMPIONSHIP LEAD WITH PODIUM

After a pointless day in the two sprint races yesterday, Guanyu Zhou responded by taking the FIA Formula 2 Feature race victory at Silverstone, while Aussie Oscar Piastri scored another podium.

The Australian started from pole position, his first of the season, but lost the lead immediately to Zhou alongside him as the lights went out.

Piastri sat in a lonely second for the entirety of the stint before he pitted at the end of lap 7.

Pitting the lap before and performing a successful undercut strategy, home hero Dan Ticktum took advantage of his warm tyres to overtake Piastri around the outside of Turn 6.

Piastri was unable to overtake the steady Matteo Nannini who on old tyres was yet to stop, by the time Aussie was able to move by, he had lost 9s to the second-place man Ticktum.

In the closing laps Piastri came under immense pressure from Dutch driver Richard Verschoor who pitted later in the race for his tyres.

As Piastri was unable to pass Nannini, Verschoor closed the margin and hounded Piastri with the pair driving side by side on several occasions.

In the end Piastri just about did enough to score his fifth podium finish of the season, and thus retaining his championship lead.

The dominant win for Zhou sees him leap back up to second in the standings from fourth.

Once Zhou got into the lead before Turn 1 he was never threatened and won the race by 3.82s.

After the intense battle with Verschoor, Piastri ended up 19.53s away from the win, but importantly 1.8s up on Verschoor.

Piastri’s Prema Racing teammate finished in fifth after starting from seventh, he pipped Juri Vips to a top five spot, after the latter elected to take the alternate strategy of starting on the harder compound tyres and finishing on the softs.

Theo Pourchaire started from fifth but went on to finish in eighth ahead of Lirim Zendeli and Jehan Daruvala.

It was an incredibly tough weekend for New Zealander and championship contender Liam Lawson who finished outside of the points in 11th.

His fellow Kiwi Marcus Armstrong also finished outside of the points in 12th ahead of Bent Viscaal, Ralph Boschung and David Beckmann.

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