Alex Dunne made history for Ireland as he won the F2 Feature Race 2025 Bahrain GP, a first for the country and himself.
The stage was set for a memorable F2 Feature Race 2025 Bahrain GP as Formula 2 celebrated its 200th race today, and although the race itself wasn’t as electric as many of the others in its history, it certainly had its memorable moments.
F2 Sprint Race | 2025 Bahrain GP | Marti Wins From Eleventh
Opening Gambits
Leo Fornaroli and Victor Martins started on the front row for the 200th Formula 2 race. A mixed start for Martins meant that he wouldn’t be at the front of the pack by the end of lap one.
It was a clean start for everyone on the grid, even if everyone didn’t perform as well as they wanted too off the line. Fornaroli had an excellent opening stint to the race. He immediately began to build a gap back to Dunne who jumped up from fourth to second.
All twenty two drivers were split strategy-wise between the soft and the hard tyre.Â
Sebastian Montoya was the only driver outside of the top eight with soft tyres down in fourteenth. The Columbian struggled to make progress with these in the opening stages of the Feature Race. He would ultimately finish in nineteenth by the time the chequered flag fell. He also received a time penalty for speeding in the pitlane too.Â
Switch for the Lead!
Dunne took first place into the first corner on lap seven. Behind him, Marti took third from Villagomez in the same spot.
It appeared that Alex Dunne was attempting to copy Zane Maloney’s winning strategy in Bahrain from 2024. This would consist of eighteen laps on the soft tyre and then the remaining fourteen laps on the hard tyre. Both he and his race engineer were calm in their exchanges to each other about this plan on the team radio.
This plan evolved slightly as Dunne was told to pit four laps sooner than expected. This naturally became a departure from Maloney’s winning formula from last year. However, Dunne was then told to stay out – this switched things up again and kept his competition guessing behind. He stayed out for another two laps. He and his team were hoping that they would ultimately still create their own winning strategy.
A Race of Strategy
At 17 years of age, Arvid Lindblad became the youngest point scorer in F2 history yesterday following the Sprint Race. His pace throughout the Feature Race was strong and consistent. He soon became a driver to keep an eye on as it looked like he could repeat what he had achieved the day before.
Meanwhile, John Bennet was the first driver to pit and switch tyres, doing so at the end of lap ten. Curiously, those on the hard tyre, of which Bennet was one, were pitting before those on the soft. This raised questions about the nature of tyre degradation and what was possible on each tyre compound during this Feature Race.
When Dunne did pit, he was able to come out just ahead of Martins. The Frenchman would then be attempting to battle him for the lead. Browning was behind the pair of them on the alternate strategy. His aim would be to close in in this second phase of the race.
Behind the leaders, the rest of the race was fairly settled. While there were moves for positions, everyone was quite well behaved and determined to make their tyres last until the end of the race.
Battle for the Lead?
Browning got closer to the win as he overtook Fornaroli for third place on lap twenty one. He then went and took second from Martins at the start of lap twenty three. He managed this before they even reached turn one and began hunting down Dunne in first.
Behind them, Fornaroli got past Martins to clinch P3 from the Frenchman. Marti was closing the gap to the pair of them, too, not far behind. Less than a lap later, Marti was past Martins. H was now determined to get past Fornaroli too and make it two podiums for himself in as many days.
Tyres were now dropping off massively across the field in the closing stages of the race, robbing us of some potentially interesting battles, especially for the podium places.
An assertive defence from Fornaroli just kept Marti at bay in the battle for third on the final lap of race. Up ahead, Dunne and Browning were nowhere near the same situation. The former had been able to open up a six second gap to second place behind him.
Alex Dunne Makes History
In the end, then, it was Alex Dunne who won for Rodin Motorsports. This made it back-to-back Feature Race wins for the team in Bahrain. Browning came home in second, with the aforementioned Fornaroli in third. Marti and Martins rounded out the top five.
Verschoor, Beganovic, Lindblad, Mini, and Durksen completed the top ten. Verschoor and Begnavoic found some pace at the end of the race but unfortunately ran out of time to properly utilise it. Linblad will have gotten the attention of those in the Formula 1 paddock again with another strong points paying result. Durksen’s tenth place will be of some comfort to him, after he was disqualified from the Sprint Race for a technical infringement.
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Formula 2 returns on April 18th in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Feature Image Credit: McLaren
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