Nicholas Latifi wins F2 season opener in Bahrain

Photo: FIA Formula 2

DAMS’ Nicholas Latifi took his first Formula 2 feature race win in the season opener in Bahrain, with poleman Luca Ghiotto recovering to finish second after a poor start.

Carlin’s Louis Deletraz made the most of Ghiotto’s bad start to take the lead from the front row, and held it for eight laps until Latifi drove around the outside of him at Turn 1.

Latifi built an advantage but lost the lead after a slow pitstop dropped him to fourth. This handed ART Grand Prix driver Nyck de Vries the lead, who was one of the first of the frontrunners to make his stop.

The lead was wrestled back by Latifi later on, while Ghiotto was also on a recovery drive after a late pitstop dropped him to sixth.

Latifi immediately pulled away from the rest of the pack, while Ghiotto made a stunning double pass on Latifi’s team-mate Sergio Sette Camara and Deletraz at Turn 1. He also dispatched series returnee Nobuharu Matsushita and de Vries, who both tumbled down the order with tyre degradation woes.

At the chequered flag Latifi led Ghiotto by 8.744 second, with Sette Camara completing the podium despite being 13th on the opening lap.

GP3 champion Anthoine Hubert was the top rookie, rising from 11th on the grid to finish fourth ahead of Deletraz and de Vries, who both had spells leading the race.

Jack Aitken was seventh in his first race with Campos, while reigning European Formula 3 champion Mick Schumacher took reverse grid pole away from Matsushita on the final lap of the race. He made up a five second deficit to make the move, as Matsushita’s tyres crumbled.

The point for fastest lap went to Ghiotto’s UNI-Virtuosi team-mate Guan Yu Zhou in 10th, ahead of the Trident duo of Ralph Boschung and?Giuliano Alesi, with Tatiana Calderon finishing 13th on debut.

The only retirement of the race was Prema’s Sean Gelael, who suffered a DRS failure and spun dramatically at Turn 1 early in the race.

Race results (32 laps)