Monaco F2: Fuoco wins crash-filled sprint race

Fuoco led off the line from pole ahead of Norris, who passed Jack Aitken for second with the ART driver retiring in the pits at the end of the opening lap due to an engine failure.

With both Nyck de Vries and Tadasuke Makino stalling, and Luca Ghiotto hitting the stationary Russian Time car of the latter, the virtual safety car was deployed.

Norris closely followed Fuoco when it was back to green but the real safety car made an appearance soon afterwards after the crash of Sean Gelael.

Gelael, who finished second in Friday's feature race, ran on the kerbs on the right-hand corner of the first Swimming Pool chicane.

With the front of his car lifting for a brief moment, Gelael smashed heavily the barriers, but walked away from the incident without a major injury.

Norris put pressure on Fuoco in the first few laps after the restart, but he gave up 1.4s on Lap 13, with the gap increasing to nearly two seconds as a result.

Fuoco's lead increased to four seconds during a brief VSC caused by George Russell hitting the wall before Rascasse, but then the safety car was out again when Alexander Albon collected Roy Nissany in the braking zone into the Nouvelle Chicane.

There were two laps remaining when it was back to green, only for Santino Ferrucci and Nirei Fukuzumi to both go off at Rascasse - with the American reporting "there is something on the track".

The race was not restarted again and Fuoco took the chequered flag first, followed by Norris, Louis Deletraz and Artem Markelov.

Deletraz had to withstand massive pressure from the charging Markelov to claim his maiden F2 podium.

Markelov was fifth early on but after a brave move on Arjun Maini at Rascasse, he was all over Deletraz for several laps.

He was close to passing the Swiss driver at both Massenet and Rascasse on multiple occasions, and the duo made small contact at the final turn, which nearly resulted in a crash.

Roberto Merhi finished fifth ahead of Maini, who accused the Spaniard of overtaking him under the safety car, with Maximilian Gunther taking seventh.

Nicholas Latifi pitted during both VSC stints and ended up grabbing the final point-scoring position in eighth.

De Vries and Ghiotto, both a lap down after their start woes, were the final two drivers to finish the race as Ralph Boschung's MP came to a halt.

Sprint race results

Cla	Driver	Team	Laps	Gap
1	Antonio Fuoco	Charouz Racing System	30
2	Lando Norris	Carlin	30	1.172
3	Louis Deletraz	Charouz Racing System	30	2.069
4	Artem Markelov	RUSSIAN TIME	30	4.091
5	Roberto Merhi	MP Motorsport	30	6.099
6	Arjun Maini	Trident	30	7.449
7	Maximilian Gunther	Arden International	30	7.955
8	Nicholas Latifi	DAMS	30	12.242
9	Nyck de Vries	Prema Powerteam	29	1 lap
10	Luca Ghiotto	Campos Racing	29	1 lap
11	Nirei Fukuzumi	Arden International	27	3 laps
12	Santino Ferrucci	Trident	27	3 laps
	Roy Nissany	Campos Racing	25	5 laps
	Alexander Albon	DAMS	25	5 laps
	Ralph Boschung	MP Motorsport	20	10 laps
	George Russell	ART Grand Prix	18	12 laps
	Sean Gelael	Prema Powerteam	3	27 laps
	Tadasuke Makino	RUSSIAN TIME	2	28 laps
	Jack Aitken	ART Grand Prix	1	29 laps