Ritomo Miyata cruises to a Sprint Race victory after taking the lead in the first corner from Sprint pole-sitter Emerson Fittipaldi.
The Japanese driver started second for the reverse-grid Sprint Race, took the lead in the first corner, and never looked back.
With two Safety Cars called during the race, the first one came within the first lap after a collision between Invicta Racing’s Joshua Dürksen and Trident’s John Bennett.
Bennett ended up in the wall after a tap from Dürksen, forcing the British driver to retire. Invicta’s Dürksen had front-wing damage, but pitted and rejoined the race.
Whilst this was going on, another collision occurred between Van Amersfoort’s Nico Varrone and ART’s Kush Maini. Varrone DNF’d on track, whilst Maini managed to limp back to the pits to retire there.
The battles start to emerge, especially between Laurens Van Hoepen and León. The third-place man dropped out of DRS to second-place Emerson Fittipaldi, and was immediately pressured by Van Hoepen.
They traded places as Van Hoepen dove down the inside of León, but the Mexican retook third place a few seconds later. Eventually, León conceded third place to Van Hoepen, dropping down into fourth.
León continued to be the man in a lot of the battles, as a few laps later his team mate, Nikola Tsolov, was battling him for fourth place.
This duel went on for a few laps until Lap 14, when the championship leader clipped the inside of the wall at Turn 20 and spun out. He failed to keep his engine going and caused the second Safety Car of the race.
The Safety Car ended on Lap 17, and they were all very well-behaved going into Turn 1, until Gabriele Minì passed Roman Bilinski into Turn 13. Bilinski dropped another place to his team mate Dino Beganovic towards the end of the lap after going wide.
The rest of the race flashes by, and Miyata takes the victory. Fittipaldi and Van Hoepen joined him on the podium. In fourth was León, then Martinius Stenshorne. The last few points places were taken by Rafael Câmara, Alexander Dunne and Prema’s Mari Boya.
The first-ever race around the Madring was full of action; the Feature Race is not one to be missed.
Lights out for the feature on Sunday at 10:25 am UK time.
Image: Formula Motorsport Limited via Getty Images
