Charles Leclerc won the sprint race at the Bahrain International Circuit with an outstanding drive which allowed him to go from P14 to victory in only 8 laps after making a pit stop. Luca Ghiotto and Oliver Rowland completed the podium.
Matsushita, who was supposed to start from reverse pole, had to start from the pit lane. Ghiotto kept the pole at the start of the race ahead of Albon, while Leclerc climbed from 5th to 3rd. Nato made slight contact with Rowland, got a puncture and had to retire. The Safety Car was deployed and when the race was restarted, Leclerc overtook Albon for P2 on the outside of turn 4. Albon soon lost position with Rowland and Markelov, who took a big strategic risk by starting with the soft tyre in a race with very high degradation. He pitted on lap 10, with 13 laps to go, and came out on 15th place, more than 40 seconds behind the leader of the race.
Meanwhile, De Vries made up some positions after starting P10 and losing a few places at the start. Fuoco, who started 9th, overtook King for P4 and Ghiotto for P3. Leclerc surprised everyone by going to plan B and pitting for new soft tyres with 8 laps to go. The Frenchman came out 14th quite ahead of Markelov.
While Markelov had only been able to go up to P11, Leclerc was already 3rd with 3 laps to go. Ahead of him, Ghiotto was catching Rowland for the lead of the race and overtook him with 2 laps to go. Finally, Leclerc managed to win an unbelievable race ahead of Ghiotto, Rowland, Latifi, King, De Vries, Albon, and Markelov, who got the last point of the race. Leclerc leaves the first weekend of the F2 season as the championship leader, having impressed everyone with his performance.
