Mick Schumacher took the Sochi feature and a bigger title lead, then faced a post-race investigation, while the sprint ended in a red flag and a fire.
Mick Schumacher won the Sochi feature for Prema, while Guanyu Zhou took the sprint after the race was abandoned on lap seven and scored at half points. The round was the tenth of the 2020 Formula 2 season. Both results shaped the title fight.
The 2020 Sochi Formula 2 round was the tenth event of the FIA Formula 2 season, two races on the Black Sea coast on 26 and 27 September 2020. Mick Schumacher won the feature race and extended his championship lead. The weekend then produced a post-race investigation, and a sprint race that was stopped by a red flag and a fire.
Where and when was the 2020 Sochi Formula 2 round held?
The races were held on 26 and 27 September 2020 at the Sochi Autodrom. It was the tenth round of the 2020 FIA Formula 2 Championship, and the weekend ran in support of the 2020 Russian Grand Prix. Air temperatures hovered near 28 degrees C during qualifying on the Black Sea coast.
Mick Schumacher and Robert Shwartzman were both Prema drivers and title rivals. Schumacher had led the championship going into the round, and the weekend tested whether he could keep that lead against his own team.
A feature win, a crank investigation and a sprint ended by fire: Sochi gave Formula 2 a weekend it would talk about for months.
How did qualifying settle the grid?
Yuki Tsunoda claimed pole with a time of 1:48.688 on his final run. Jehan Daruvala missed out by six-thousandths of a second, and all 22 drivers took part in the Friday afternoon session. Schumacher led the field out of the pits at the start of the session.
Shwartzman set the first competitive time, 1:49.634, but Daruvala found four tenths on his second run to take the top spot. Tsunoda slotted into second ahead of Mazepin, and Jake Hughes, who was making his debut, jumped to ninth on his second run.
Daruvala found another tenth on his third run, while Tsunoda improved but could not match him. The times at the top kept changing as the session went on, and the drivers used fresh supersoft tyres for each push. Zhou and Callum Ilott moved into third and fourth, and the two UNI-Virtuosi cars were among the leaders as the session continued.
On the final run Tsunoda overcame his deficit to Daruvala and set the fastest time. Daruvala followed him across the line, and Shwartzman was briefly third before Schumacher and Ilott moved ahead of him. Shwartzman finished as the best-placed Russian driver, with Mazepin tenth and Artem Markelov twentieth.
What happened in the feature race?
Tsunoda led from pole when the lights went out, with Schumacher on his tail. Schumacher passed Daruvala at the start, and a multi-car collision at turn two later brought out the safety car while several cars were stranded. Ilott recovered from a poor launch on the way.
Ilott lost out to Ghiotto early on, but he then fired his car around the outside of Ghiotto to reclaim fourth. Juri Vips tried a lunge on the inside of a three-car fight involving Louis Deletraz and Pedro Piquet, and then moved across into Deletraz's path as they braked for turn two.
Vips was spun across the nose of a Charouz car, and Piquet was pushed into Christian Lundgaard. Dan Ticktum, Felipe Drugovich and others took avoiding action as the cars scattered. Vips was left stranded at turn two, and Lundgaard retired on the outside of turn three with damage.
Roy Nissany and Felipe Drugovich also retired in the pits after damage from the incident. Piquet and Deletraz had to pit for new front wings, and both were well down the order when the race resumed at the start of lap three.
At the restart Tsunoda bolted away, and Schumacher paced him out of the final corner but could not challenge into turn two. The only change in the top ten came when Mazepin went down the inside of Zhou into turn four to claim seventh place.
Daruvala was the first driver to stop once the pit window opened after lap six. Schumacher's stop surprised the Prema crew, and team boss Rene Rosin was seen urging his mechanics to prepare. Tsunoda and Schumacher stopped on lap eight.
Aitken moved into the lead on the alternate strategy and stopped with eleven laps to go. Mazepin then locked up while trying to pass Aitken for the lead, which let Zhou through for second on the road. Zhou made a later attempt on Aitken at turn four on lap sixteen, but it failed and he dropped back.
Schumacher passed Tsunoda into turn three to take the lead, after Tsunoda had washed wide on the exit of turn two. Schumacher then kept a one-second gap to Ilott so that Ilott could not use DRS. Ilott's pace faded in the closing laps, and Tsunoda closed up behind him.
Ilott defended an outside move at turn two on the final tour, but Tsunoda completed a manoeuvre around the outside of him through turn three to take second. Schumacher won by six seconds, with Tsunoda second, Ilott third, Ghiotto fourth and Daruvala fifth.
Mazepin finished seventh ahead of Zhou, and Armstrong and Ticktum scored the final points. Schumacher's win lifted his championship lead to eighteen points, while his Prema teammate Shwartzman had slipped from eighth to eleventh in the late stages after moves from Mazepin, Marcus Armstrong and Dan Ticktum.
What did the post-race investigations decide?
Schumacher's car was found to use a superseded crank in its DRS system. That part had been replaced for safety reasons after the 2019 Bahrain sprint race, and the modified part had been mandated from the 2019 Baku feature race. Prema argued that the part had been fitted after Schumacher's qualifying crash at Monza.
Prema pointed out that the part was very similar to the one it replaced, and that it had passed scrutineering for two full events. After a two-hour investigation the FIA ruled that there had been no sporting advantage from it.
The visual similarity between the two cranks was so strong that every team was given technical drawings of the new part for the sprint race. Dallara was also asked to create a replacement part for 2021, which would remove any further confusion.
Separately, Rene Rosin was investigated under Article 21.5 of the sporting regulations, which restricts the number of operational personnel working on an F2 car to twelve during a race meeting. The ruling found that ambient pitlane noise meant Rosin had no impact on the pitstop itself. He was nonetheless fined EUR 10,000, because his actions could be misconstrued.
Four teams, ART Grand Prix, Carlin, DAMS and UNI-Virtuosi, declared an intent to appeal within a four-day window. None of them had lodged a formal protest before the sprint race began.
How did the sprint race end?
The sprint race was originally scheduled for 21 laps, but it was red-flagged on lap seven after a huge collision between Luca Ghiotto and Jack Aitken. Because the race did not reach 75 percent of its planned distance, only half the points were awarded.
Zhou made the best start from reverse-grid pole and led into the first corner. Aitken made an excellent start from third to take second, while Mazepin, who had started on the dirtier side of the grid, dropped to third and came under attack from Daruvala and Ghiotto.
Schumacher leapt from eighth to sixth at the start. Guilherme Samaia and Jake Hughes then clashed after the exit of turn two, and both retired from the race. Yellow flags covered the removal of their cars, and the race resumed after a short intervention.
A virtual safety car period was used while the cars were removed. When racing resumed, Mazepin fired down the inside of Aitken into turn five to reclaim second, while Zhou had built a lead of about two seconds at the front.
Schumacher pressured Aitken at the restart and then threw his car down the inside of him at the penultimate corner to take third. Daruvala then passed Aitken into the final corner. Ghiotto lined up a move on Aitken for fourth, and Aitken held the better line through the next corner.
Aitken's right rear tyre deflated as he held off Ghiotto through a fast left-hander. The car slid into Ghiotto's, and both cars hit the outside wall at high speed, shredding the barriers.
The barrier damage caused a red flag. Ghiotto's car caught fire while buried in the barriers, and the race was abandoned on lap seven. Both drivers escaped unaided and without injury.
The final classification was taken from the order on lap five, and half points were awarded. Zhou was classified as the winner with 7.5 points. Mazepin finished second, half a point behind with the fastest lap bonus, and Schumacher took third to extend his title lead.
How did the Sochi round change the title fight?
Schumacher left Sochi with a championship lead that had grown to eighteen points after the feature race, and his third place in the sprint kept him ahead of his rivals. Shwartzman, his teammate, had been in contention before his slide down the order in the feature race.
Both investigations involved Prema, the crank inquiry and the Rosin ruling, so the team left Sochi with questions to answer beyond the track. The FIA ruling settled the crank question, but the Rosin fine and the new part for 2021 kept the subject alive.
| Session | First | Second | Third |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feature race (26 September) | Mick Schumacher, Prema Racing | Yuki Tsunoda, Carlin | Callum Ilott, UNI-Virtuosi |
| Sprint race (27 September) | Guanyu Zhou, UNI-Virtuosi | Nikita Mazepin, Hitech | Mick Schumacher, Prema Racing |
How did the teams fare across the weekend?
Carlin had the strongest qualifying, with Tsunoda taking pole and Daruvala second. In the feature race the two Carlin drivers finished second and fifth, which left the team well placed for the sprint. UNI-Virtuosi then won the sprint through Zhou, a result that owed much to his reverse-grid start.
Prema's Schumacher took the feature win, but his teammate Shwartzman fell from eighth to eleventh in the same race. Hitech's Mazepin reached the sprint podium in second, half a point behind Zhou, and the sprint's scoring left the standings with fewer points than a full race would have produced.
