Mick Schumacher took his first win of 2020 in the F2 feature race at Monza after early race leader Callum Ilott stalled in the pits.
Schumacher got a lightning start from seventh on the grid, jumping all the way up to second behind polesitter Ilott on the run to the first corner. Christian Lundgaard also got away well by passing Luca Ghiotto and Yuki Tsunoda to move into third.
The gap between Ilott and Schumacher stayed steady at half a second in the opening laps, before Ilott was able to open it up to just over a second on lap 7. By lap 10 Ilott had extended the gap further to almost two seconds before he made his pit stop.
But as Ilott pulled away from his box he stalled the car, and by the time UNI-Virtuosi got it going again Ilott had fallen to 21st. As well as losing the lead to Schumacher, Ilott also found himself two places behind title rival Robert Shwartzman, who had already made his own stop.
However, Ilott found a fresh turn of pace in his second stint. Setting successive fastest laps in his first few tours out of the pits, Ilott made his way through the lower midfield and alternate strategy drivers still yet to stop.
By lap 19 Ilott was back in the points as the final alternate strategy runners came into the pits, and seemed to have more speed than the other drivers on the same strategy ahead of him. By lap 23 he had overhauled Shwartzman for sixth, before getting into the top five with a pass on Louis Deletraz a lap later.
By this stage Schumacher was 11 seconds up the road in first, with eight laps left to run. But after catching and running close to Tsunoda in fourth, Ilott’s charge was halted as he struggled to find a way past the Carlin. Over the next few laps Ilott’s pace began to drop as he stayed stuck behind Tsunoda, which allowed Schumacher to get further ahead and Ilott’s teammate Guanyu Zhou to catch and pass Ilott three laps from the end.
Ilott eventually crossed the line in sixth place while Schumacher cruised to victory with more than three seconds back to second place. But despite the disappointment of losing the win, Ilott’s sixth place and points for pole means he is now level on points with Shwartzman in the championship.
Schumacher’s unchallenged run to the flag was helped by the fierce battle over second and third behind him. After scrapping into the first corner, Lundgaard, Tsunoda and Ghiotto continued to fight over the podium positions through the rest of the race.
Tsunoda was quick to recover from losing out to Lundgaard and Ghiotto at the start, passing Ghiotto later on the opening lap and Lundgaard on lap 5. But the trio found themselves together again at the end of that lap, going wheel to wheel through Parabolica and down the straight. Lundgaard eventually won out into Turn 1, but not before the three made contact in the braking zone, sending Ghiotto down the escape road and dropping him back to fifth.
On lap 8 Lundgaard became the first of the trio to pit as ART sought the undercut advantage. The Dane kept ahead after the others made their stops, although Ghiotto was able to jump Tsunoda on strategy and emerged as the fastest on fresh tyres late in the race. On lap 25 Ghiotto set the fastest lap, before he caught and passed Lundgaard for second on lap 28.
Lundgaard fought back in the final laps but had to settle for third, while Tsunoda finished fourth ahead of Zhou, Ilott and Dan Ticktum. Deletraz took eighth place to deny Shwartzman in ninth reverse grid pole for tomorrow, and Jehan Daruvala took the final point in tenth.
With Ilott and Shwartzman both finishing further down the order, Schumacher’s feature race win has elevated him into the title hunt with them, as he moves into third in the standings with only three points separating him from his fellow Ferrari juniors.
Full race result:
| Pos. | Driver | Team | Points |
| 1 | Mick Schumacher | Prema Racing | 25 |
| 2 | Luca Ghiotto (FL) | Hitech Grand Prix | 20 |
| 3 | Christian Lundgaard | ART Grand Prix | 15 |
| 4 | Yuki Tsunoda | Carlin | 12 |
| 5 | Guanyu Zhou | UNI-Virtuosi Racing | 10 |
| 6 | Callum Ilott | UNI-Virtuosi Racing | 8 |
| 7 | Dan Ticktum | DAMS | 6 |
| 8 | Louis Deletraz | Charouz Racing System | 4 |
| 9 | Robert Shwartzman | Prema Racing | 2 |
| 10 | Jehan Daruvala | Carlin | 1 |
| 11 | Juri Vips | DAMS | |
| 12 | Pedro Piquet | Charouz Racing System | |
| 13 | Jack Aitken | Campos Racing | |
| 14 | Marcus Armstrong | ART Grand Prix | |
| 15 | Nobuharu Matsushita | MP Motorsport | |
| 16 | Felipe Drugovich | MP Motorsport | |
| 17 | Artem Markelov | BWT HWA Racelab | |
| 18 | Giuliano Alesi | BWT HWA Racelab | |
| 19 | Roy Nissany | Trident | |
| 20 | Marino Sato | Trident | |
| 21 | Guilherme Samaia | Campos Racing | |
| Ret. | Nikita Mazepin | Hitech Grand Prix |