| The sun had returned to Monza today for the 21 lap Sprint Race and the rain that had heavily affected yesterday’s Feature race had fortunately departed and it was warmer than yesterday with air and track temperatures of 18° and 29° respectively. The Feature Race had been a major disappointment to the Racing Engineering team with their new driver Nyck De Vries leading almost the entire race until contact with Leclerc on the final lap saw the young Dutchman forced to retire with a puncture which relegated him to the back of the grid in 18th for today’s race. For Gustav, it was more positive with the young Swede climbing from 17th on the grid to 9th at the finish and a post-race penalty to Albon promoted him to 8th and pole position on the reversed grid. All the cars would be starting on the Pirelli P Zero White medium compound tyres.
As the lights went off Gustav was slow away from pole position dropping to 4th into the first corner and he completed the opening lap close behind the 3rd placed car of Sette Camara. The first five cars now began an intense battle and on lap five he was running side-by-side with Ghiotto and as they entered the first chicane the Racing Engineering car was forced to cut the corner losing momentum which allowed Ghiotto, Latifi and Fuoco ahead as he fell to 7th. On lap eight Gustav lost another position to Merhi and he was now battling with Albon and on lap nine the ART car passed to drop him to 9th and he now began to fall back as his tyres deteriorated and on lap 12 he was down to 16th. Gustav continued to struggle and he pitted in the closing laps for new tyres dropping to 20th which became 19th when King pitted. Although the Racing Engineering driver set the fastest lap of the race so far in the closing stages he crossed the finishing line in 18th.
Nyck dropped to 20th on the opening lap but he was soon up to 17th by passing Visoiu, Jeffri and Ferrucci and he was now chasing Boschung and on lap eleven he was ahead to take 16th which then became 15th when he passed his teammate. Nyck’s next target was Norman Nato and he soon became part of a huge bunch of cars with the gap from Merhi in 5th to Nyck, who had passed Rowland, in 14th was just seven seconds. On lap fourteen he passed Nato and he was closing quickly on King who ran wide and he then quickly out-braked Markelov to take 11th. His next target was Latifi who he passed on lap nineteen but he lost a place to Nato in the process and Nyck lost a further place to Rowland on lap 20 to finish the race in 12th. A disappointing result for Racing Engineering with neither driver able to score points and, in the finish, the weekend was about what might have been with Nyck so close to winning yesterday and Gustav starting from pole today but the team have shown that they are now back where they belong at the front. There is now a five-week break until the next round at Jerez starting on the 6th of October. |
