Virtuosi’s Jack Doohan beat championship leader Felipe Drugovich to victory in the FIA Formula 2 feature race at Spa-Francorchamps.
But Drugovich’s chief rival Theo Pourchaire suffered a blow to his title hopes by retiring early on with a technical issue while running eighth.
After lining up on pole, MP Motorsport’s Drugovich led into La Source, while Enzo Fittipaldi (Charouz) and Logan Sargeant (Carlin) made slow starts behind, the latter tumbling to eighth.
That enabled Doohan to gain two spots to second, with Beckmann climbing from fifth to third.
Saturday’s sprint race winner Liam Lawson tried to take fourth on lap two, but Fittipaldi held on to the place after running off track but soon slowed to let the Carlin driver by.
The pair continued their squabble, touching wheels through Les Combes, with Lawson remaining ahead, and both came to blows again at the same corner after making their mandatory pitstop.
Doohan made an earlier stop to change from soft to hard compound tyres to undercut Drugovich and inherit the net lead.
As the pair moved up the order past those still to stop, Doohan lost crucial time behind Van Amersfoort Racing’s Amaury Cordeel, allowing Drugovich to close in.
But, once Richard Verschoor (Trident) and Clement Novalak (MP) headed to the pits for their mandatory stops with nine laps remaining, Doohan was able to pull clear to take his third victory – his first in a feature race – by almost two seconds.
Lawson came home third while Verschoor climbed from ninth to fourth on soft tyres after his pitstop.
Fittipaldi held off Sargeant for sixth, the latter having his car repaired overnight after his crash in Saturday’s sprint race.
VAR’s David Beckmann edged DAMS’s Ayuma Iwasa to seventh by 0.1s, while Hitech GP’s Juri Vips recovered from the back of the grid to ninth ahead of Novalak.
Campos Racing’s Lirim Zendelli was another to retire with a car issue late on.
Featured image credit: @formula2 official twitter
