Red Bull junior Tsolov wins F2 feature race, as Dunne crashes into teammate in Melbourne

The Campos driver had to overcome two safety car restarts to beat Rafael Camara and Laurens Van Hoepen, respectively, to the top step of the podium.

Meanwhile, newly signed Alpine junior Alex Dunne crashed with Rodin teammate Martinius Stenshorne on Lap Three, with Tsolov taking advantage as the pair took each other out of the race.

Stenshorne had taken the lead from pole sitter Dino Beganovic, who struggled at the start, with Dunne challenging his teammate all throughout the opening lap.

On Lap 2, Dunne dived down the inside of Stenshorne at Turn 11, with the Rodin pair remaining side-by-side to Turn 13, as the latter fended off his teammate.

At Turn One of the following lap, however, Dunne had the slipstream and looked like he had overtaken Stenshorne, but the pair made contact and both crashed out of the race, with Tsolov inheriting the lead.

The first Safety Car restart occurred on Lap 5, with Tsolov building a comfortable gap to the Camara and Beganovic.

The first pit cycle began on Lap 8, with Beganovic boxing the following lap, losing places due to traffic but with enough of a tyre advantage to catch up to the back and overtake Camara by Lap 14, to then set about chasing down Tsolov.

But the Bulgarian's remained comfortable, and then Beganovic hit problems. His DAMS pulled to the side of the track on Lap 17 and was forced into an early retirement. The Virtual Safety Car was deployed, converted into a full Safety Car on Lap 19.

Nico Varrone, on the alternative strategy could then make his mandatory stop and fit the Super soft tyres, re-joining in the lead, but he was later handed a 10-second time penalty for speeding in the pitlane.

On Lap 22, the VAR driver was under pressure from behind at the second restart. Tsolov made took the lead at Turn 3, but fellow rookie Camara failed to follow his rival, allowing the Bulgarian to build a buffer again.

Camara took P2 on lap 27, but the gap to Tsolov stood at 2.2s with six laps to go.

By Lap 29, Varrone was out of the podium places, with Trident's Laurens Van Hoepen taking P3 in the end.

But it was all about the uncatchable Tsolov, who said after the race: “Very excited to finally win my first F2 race in a Feature Race on top of everything as well. I think in Qualifying we already had the pace to be fighting for pole. Then coming into today after a tough day yesterday, I tried to put everything back together and be resilient, and managed to take home the win.”