Felipe Drugovich managed the tyres to perfection to take his third Formula 2 victory in dominant style in the Bahrain feature race.
Callum Ilott finished second to reduce the deficit in the title race to Mick Schumacher, who took fourth, to 12 points, while Yuki Tsunoda kept his championship hopes alive after storming from the back of the grid to sixth.
MP Motorsport’s Drugovich took the lead away from polesitter Ilott at the first corner, while Schumacher made another lightning getaway from tenth on the grid to run fifth. Prema’s Schumacher then took fourth from Virtuosi’s Guanyu Zhou on the first lap, light contact resulting in Zhou needing to pit with a damaged front wing.
The championship leader then took ART’s Marcus Armstrong for third at the beginning of lap two but Armstrong, enjoying an upturn in form, fought back past Schumacher a few corners later. Armstrong and Schumacher, both running the more durable hard tyre, then started to close in on fellow Ferrari junior Ilott, who was trying to nurse his medium compound tyres.
Virtuosi’s Ilott was passed by Armstrong into turn four on the eighth lap, and then lost out to chief title rival Schumacher at the start of the following lap. Schumacher moved up to second after Armstrong locked up and flatspotted a tyre, and found himself in the lead once Drugovich, who had controlled the race at the front on the medium tyre, pitted after 15 laps.
Drugovich ran wide at turn eight after his stop, losing track position to Ilott, who had pitted a lap earlier. The pair, on fresh hard tyres then started to lap three seconds per lap quicker than Schumacher at the front. Schumacher pitted four laps later for medium tyres, rejoining in sixth, while Drugovic retook Ilott into turn one to move back into the lead.
Drugovich pulled clear for the remaining 13 laps to take the win by almost 15 seconds, while Ilott cruised to second place.
Schumacher, who had rejoined almost 15 seconds behind Drugovich after his stop, was unable to reduce the gap, but passed team-mate Robert Shwartzman and Armstrong to run fourth, and caught Carlin’s Jehan Daruvala, running in a strong third, with three laps to go.
Daruvala fended off a number of overtaking attempts from the Prema driver to claim his first podium, with Schumacher settling for fourth after his challenge faded in the last two laps.
Tsunoda bounced back from his spin in qualifying in style in the second Carlin, pitting on the same lap as Schumacher after starting on the hard tyre, before pulling off a number of overtakes to come from 14th to sixth by the finish, just 0.2s behind Hitech’s Nikita Mazepin, who took fifth.
Armstrong finished seventh ahead of Shwartzman, who will start Sunday’s reversed-grid sprint race from pole. Despite starting third, DAMS driver Dan Ticktum finished in ninth after losing several places off the line and struggling with tyre degradation throughout. Fellow Williams Formula 1 development driver Jack Aitken took the final point in tenth for Campos.
Sean Geleal finished 13th on his return to F2 action for DAMS after suffering a broken vertebra earlier in the season, 2020 FIA Formula 3 runner-up Theo Pourchaire was 18th on his F2 debut for HWA and ART’s Christian Lundgaard’s title hopes came to an end after finishing in 19th.
Race result (32 laps)
| 1 | Felipe Drugovich | MP Motorsport | 58m24.004s |
| 2 | Callum Ilott | Virtuosi | +14.833s |
| 3 | Jehan Daruvala | Carlin | +19.376s |
| 4 | Mick Schumacher | Prema | +20.270s |
| 5 | Nikita Mazepin | Hitech | +28.293s |
| 6 | Yuki Tsunoda | Carlin | +28.590s |
| 7 | Marcus Armstrong | ART | +31.361s |
| 8 | Robert Shwartzman | Prema | +43.868s |
| 9 | Dan Ticktum | DAMS | +46.959s |
| 10 | Jack Aitken | Campos | +47.327s |
| 11 | Pedro Piquet | Charouz | +49.174s |
| 12 | Luca Ghiotto | Hitech | +49.294s |
| 13 | Sean Gelael | DAMS | +50.590s |
| 14 | Guanyu Zhou | Virtuosi | +53.775s |
| 15 | Roy Nissany | Trident | +53.816s |
| 16 | Louis Deletraz | Charouz | +55.957s |
| 17 | Giuliano Alesi | MP Motorsport | +1m01.488s |
| 18 | Theo Pourchaire | HWA | +1m01.839s |
| 19 | Christian Lundgaard | ART | +1m03.086s |
| 20 | Marino Sato | Trident | +1m05.576s |
| 21 | Guilherme Samaia | Campos | +1m06.756s |
| 22 | Artem Markelov | HWA | +1m16.019s |
Featured image credit: @fia_f2 official twitter
