Sochi F2: Drugovich heads Boschung in practice

The UNI-Virtuosi driver ran strongly throughout the 45 minute session, setting a personal best 1m49.423s effort as practice reached the halfway mark.

Drugovich’s time, on the medium tyres, was 0.021s faster than Campos Racing’s Boschung, who had held the top spot in the early running.

ART Grand Prix’s Theo Pourchaire was third-fastest on his debut at the circuit, only 0.179s shy of Drugovich’s pace. 

Title contender Guanyu Zhou was fourth while championship leader Oscar Piastri, also on debut at the venue, ended up in 10th position, half a second slower than Drugovich. 

Campos Racing’s Boschung was the first to set an indicative time clocking a 1m50.466s effort on the medium tyre, which was soon eclipsed by ART Grand Prix’s Christian Lundgaard.

However, Lundgaard’s time at the top was short-lived as Boschung immediately responded dipping into the 1m49s bracket with 30 minutes of the session remaining.

As the session progressed towards the halfway mark, times continued to tumble and Drugovich was among those to improve.

The Brazilian managed to pip Boschung at the top by 0.021s, while Pourchaire jumped to third and Zhou moved to fourth ahead of Vips and Lundgaard.   

There was more movement in the top six 10 minutes later when local favourite Robert Shwartzman put his Prema into sixth, 0.4s adrift of the pace, but ahead of teammate Piastri in ninth.

The session was halted with eight minutes remaining when Alessio Deledda spun his HWA on the exit of Turn 14. The Italian managed to avoid any contact with the barriers but required assistance from the marshals to remove the stricken car from the track.  

Once the action resumed there was still time for shuffle in the top 10. Bent Viscaal logged a time good enough for sixth behind Juri Vips, which demoted Shwartzman to seventh at the chequered flag.

The top 10 was completed by Lundgaard, Richard Verschoor and Piastri.  

Before the red flag, the session ran largely without incident although stewards were called to investigate a pitlane incident between championship leader Piastri and Lirim Zendeli after the session.  

Earlier in the session Dan Ticktum suffered a lock up at Turn 2 while David Beckmann ran down the escape road after a lock up at Turn 13. 

Ticktum would end up in 21st position with Beckmann in 18th spot.

The F2 field will return to the track for qualifying on the super soft compound tyres at 1325 BST.

Sochi F2 - Practice results:

Cla	#	Driver	Team	Time	Gap
1	4	Felipe Drugovich	UNI-Virtuosi	1'49.423
2	21	Ralph Boschung	Campos Racing	1'49.444	0.021
3	10	Theo Pourchaire	ART Grand Prix	1'49.602	0.179
4	3	Guanyu Zhou	UNI-Virtuosi	1'49.651	0.228
5	8	Jüri Vips	HitechGP	1'49.680	0.257
6	24	Bent Viscaal	Trident	1'49.802	0.379
7	1	Robert Shwartzman	Prema Powerteam	1'49.839	0.416
8	9	Christian Lundgaard	ART Grand Prix	1'49.871	0.448
9	11	Richard Verschoor	MP Motorsport	1'49.929	0.506
10	2	Oscar Piastri	Prema Powerteam	1'49.991	0.568
11	6	Jehan Daruvala	Carlin	1'50.052	0.629
12	17	Marcus Armstrong	DAMS	1'50.122	0.699
13	16	Roy Nissany	DAMS	1'50.127	0.704
14	12	Lirim Zendeli	MP Motorsport	1'50.408	0.985
15	7	Liam Lawson	HitechGP	1'50.466	1.043
16	15	Guilherme Samaia	Charouz Racing System	1'50.489	1.066
17	22	Jake Hughes	HWA Racelab	1'50.610	1.187
18	20	David Beckmann	Campos Racing	1'50.764	1.341
19	14	Enzo Fittipaldi	Charouz Racing System	1'50.803	1.380
20	25	Marino Sato	Trident	1'50.944	1.521
21	5	Dan Ticktum	Carlin	1'50.992	1.569
22	23	Alessio Deledda	HWA Racelab	1'52.531	3.108
View full results