Schumacher beats out Deletraz for top spot in Free Practice

Mick Schumacher got his Round 5 off to the ideal start, beating out Louis Delétraz by 0.031s to finish first in FIA Formula 2 Free Practice at Silverstone. The German set his time of 1:39.783 early into the session and it wouldn’t be beaten. Dan Ticktum completed the top three.

Jack Aitken set the fastest of the early push laps around his home circuit with a time of 1:41.049, but his British counterpart, Callum Ilott, quickly improved upon this to dip below 1m 41s and take P1.

Schumacher flew into first at the 15 minutes mark, and then bettered the time on his next fast lap, with two fastest sectors to break the 1m 40s barrier. His teammate dived in beneath him, six tenths slower.

Delétraz and Ticktum were able to separate the PREMAs, doing just about enough to take second and third and demote Shwartzman to P4. Nikita Mazepin thought he had toppled them all, setting two purple sectors, only to see his laptime deleted for exceeding track limits.

A red flag was shown after Marino Sato’s car went up in smoke. Thankfully, the Trident racer was safely out of the car.

Nothing changed when the cars returned to the track, as they shifted their focus to gathering data ahead of Qualifying later today, at 5pm local time.

Sean Gelael took the final of the top five slots, with his best FP session of the season so far. He was followed by Yuki Tsunoda, Aitken, Jehan Daruvala, Guanyu Zhou and Christian Lundgaard.