F2 Bahrain: Pourchaire dominates feature race with lights-to-flag win

The ART Grand Prix driver, who finished second last year, made a long stint on the softer of the two tyre compounds work in his favour to crush any of Ralph Boschung's early hopes of winning both races in Bahrain.

Pourchaire instead secured a commanding win having preserved the lead off the line at the start, avoiding the first lap chaos behind him to emerge scot-free.

He endured a safety car early on before building a massive lead, pitting on lap 12 before passing Ralph Boschung when the Swiss made his own pitstop to retake the lead three laps later. From there, it was a clear path to victory for the Alfa Romeo F1 reserve driver to take his sixth series win.

A first lap melee shook up the order at Turn 6, Richard Verschoor and Prema driver Frederik Vesti came together, sending Verschoor into a spin as a slow-starting Victor Martins and Roman Stanek also made contact.

The incident caused most of the field to take evasive action and allowed several shock reshuffles, bringing Boschung and Maini into the top three, but ended the races of Vesti, Martins and Stanek.

Pourchaire had already bolted and retained the lead through the safety car, with Maini behind him, but Boschung soon overtook his Campos stablemate on the lap four restart to put pressure on the Sauber Academy driver.

Boschung, running on the alternate strategy of starting on the soft tyre, attempted to find a way past Pourchaire on the hard compound, but his challenge slowly began to subside despite a tyre advantage.

The leader then had a big lock up at Turn 10 on lap 12, prompting him to pit early for the soft tyre, with Boschung inheriting the lead.

Boschung then followed suit two laps later to collect the hard tyre, emerging from the pitlane some way behind Pourchaire as the Frenchman had successfully benefitted from the undercut.

Pourchaire's tyres managed to hold up for the 20-lap stint as Boschung was unable to make any inroads on the harder compound, and his lead continued to grow to a near 20-second advantage by the chequered flag.

Sprint race winner Boschung thus clinched second place for Campos Racing in a brilliant weekend for the Spanish team, having lined up 10th for Sunday's race.

The podium was completed by Zane Maloney, who made a storming charge from 18th on the grid to third place.

The Rodin Carlin rookie made steady progress after his mandatory pitstop despite resistance from team-mate Enzo Fittipaldi, and was up to eighth by lap 22.

He then continued to take almost a place a lap for the remainder of the race, easing past Jack Doohan (Virtuosi), DAMS' Arthur Leclerc, Ayumu Iwasa and Oliver Bearman in consecutive tours.

Three laps from the end of the race, Maloney had closed the gap to third-placed Maini from seven seconds to just three, and made it past him on the penultimate lap with the help of DRS down to Turn 1.

The Indian rookie settled for fourth, with Richard Verschoor in fifth, having taken advantage of his fresher tyres to cut through the fierce battle in the top 10 in the later stages.

Despite running very wide at Turn 10 twice and with several lock-ups, Leclerc clinched sixth ahead of fellow rookie Isack Hadjar (Hitech) and Iwasa.

Fittipaldi finished ninth, while Juan Manuel Correa rounded off the points-paying places for VAR on his return to F2.

F2 returns in Saudi Arabia from 17 to 19 March.

Cla	Driver	Team	Gap
1	Theo Pourchaire	ART Grand Prix
2	Ralph Boschung	Campos Racing	19.666
3	Zane Maloney	Rodin Carlin	31.587
4	Kush Maini	Campos Racing	38.789
5	Richard Verschoor	Van Amersfoort Racing	43.082
6	Arthur Leclerc	DAMS	44.342
7	Isack Hadjar	Hitech Pulse-Eight	46.456
8	Ayumu Iwasa	DAMS	50.815
9	Enzo Fittipaldi	Rodin Carlin	51.396
10	Juan Manuel Correa	Van Amersfoort Racing	51.837
11	Roy Nissany	PHM Racing by Charouz	52.939
12	Jak Crawford	Hitech Pulse-Eight	53.329
13	Clement Novalak	Trident	53.953
14	Oliver Bearman	Prema Powerteam	59.739
15	Amaury Cordeel	Invicta Virtuosi Racing	1'00.968
16	Jack Doohan	Invicta Virtuosi Racing	1'05.204
17	Jehan Daruvala	MP Motorsport	1'06.463
18	Brad Benavides	PHM Racing by Charouz	1'33.235
	Dennis Hauger	MP Motorsport
	Victor Martins	ART Grand Prix
	Frederik Vesti	Prema Powerteam
	Roman Staněk	Trident
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