Armstrong suffers frustrating weekend in Monza

Marcus Armstrong’s tough debut Formula 2 campaign continues to take another blow as his point-less streak extends another week and was once again comfortably thumped by ART teammate Christian Lundgaard.

Lundgaard picked up back-to-back third-place finishes in Races 15 and 16 of the championship from Monza while his Kiwi teammate would struggle in the Feature Race to finish 14^th while the second sprint race saw him forced to make a pitstop to drop a lap on the field, eventually finishing 19^th.

Armstrong has yet to rediscover the comfort he has had with the ART car since Austria and has battled tyre woes and a lack of overall performance to the rest of the field. It was an unfortunate result considering he had demonstrated a strong turn in pace in practice where he ended up fifth fastest.

His results also follow a bizarre trend in which the second ART car is significantly slower than the other. In 2019, Nyck de Vries steered the team to a drivers championship while teammate Nikita Mazepun scored just 11 points all season. A similar scenario occurred in 2018 with George Russell lifting the crown while his stablemate Jack Aitken struggled down in 11^th.

Armstrong perhaps the paid the price for a frustrating qualifying session on Friday, ending up six-tenths off the pace in 15^th.

An early pitstop strategy in the feature race looked to make amends to that and Armstrong had found himself sitting pretty inside the top-10 with only a few laps in hand. But indecently fast tyre wear, coupled by a controversial five-second penalty for forcing a rival off the circuit had him drop outside the points at the chequered flag.

The sprint race fared no better and Armstrong pitted on Lap 4 of 21 with suspected damage which cost him a lap and with no Safety Car intervention was unable to catch back up on the field.

Armstrong is now 13^th in the championship which saw a new driver take control of the lead with Callum Ilott scoring a second-place finish in the final race to displace Mick Schumacher who will leave Monza overjoyed with an impressive feature race win following a stall by Ilott in the pit sequence.

The next round of the F2 championship will be on September 11-13 from the Mugello Circuit, one not familiar with many drivers and first for the history of the top-tier feeder series.

Feature Race results:

Sprint Race results: