Drugovich takes dominant F2 feature race win in Bahrain ahead of Illot

Felipe Drugovich ran out a comfortable winner in the Formula 2 feature race in Bahrain as the Brazilian claimed his third victory of the season.

Superb tyre management in the first stint of the race allowed Drugvoich to claim a dominant victory by over 14s ahead of Callum Ilott and Jehan Daruvala.

Mick Schumacher recovered from tenth on the grid to finish fourth, meaning his lead over Ilott in the championship sits at 12 points with three races remaining.

Starting on the front row of the grid alongside title contender Ilott, Drugovich made a better start and gained the lead into Turn 1.

Ilott settled into second place ahead of Marcus Armstrong and the fast-starting Schumacher - who gained four places off the start, before pulling off an aggressive move on Guanyu Zhou into Turns 5 and 6.

Schumacher’s decision to start on the harder rubber looked to be a masterstroke in the early stages as he overtook Ilott into Turn 1 on Lap 9, before getting past Armstrong for second later on in the lap following a mistake by the ART driver.

The net lead of the race changed hands through the pit stops, Ilott getting ahead of Drugovich as the MP Motorsport driver struggled to get his new hard tyres up to temperature.

Once he did, Drugovich - who stopped four laps later than Ilott - made light work of the Briton, ultimately opening up a 14.8s gap to claim his fourth victory of the campaign.

Schumacher was ahead of Ilott before the pit stop phase but struggled to recover when he finally made his pit stop on Lap 19.

Daruvala hung onto his maiden podium as Schumacher appeared to be taking extra caution when attempting overtakes in the closing laps with the title on the line.

Nikita Mazepin enjoyed a solid race making the most of the hard to medium strategy to finish fifth, while Yuki Tsunoda recovered from the back of the grid to finish sixth to keep his hopes of finishing third in the championship alive.

Armstrong classified seventh ahead of Robert Shwartzman, who was one of the first drivers to stop for hard tyres but maintained enough pace to secure reverse grid pole position.

Dan Ticktum and Jack Aitken completed the top ten.