After a disappointing qualifying, championship leader Robert Shwartzman made the alternate strategy work to come from eleventh on the grid to win the FIA Formula 2 feature race in Hungary.
He made a mega start and was sixth after the first lap before the safety car came out for the Trident cars colliding with each other. The second safety car (on lap four) was deployed as Marcus Armstrong, Christian Lundgaard and Artem Markelov came together at turn five.
The big issue for everyone was tyre wear; the medium tyres especially seemed to degrade very quickly and that made it very tricky to have good pace and tyre wear but the Russian perfected both.
And as the top ten pitted to get rid of their soft tyres, Shwartzman continued on the mediums and he was able to overtake Mick Schumacher, Luca Ghiotto and Callum Ilott after his pit-stop for the soft tyres to retake the lead and he sped off into the distance.
Schumacher couldn’t hold on to second either as Nikita Mazepin, from sixteenth of the grid and on the alternate strategy, passed the German on the penultimate lap. Schumacher eventually came home third ahead of Ghiotto.
Fifth and sixth went to more drivers who did the opposite to the top ten qualifiers; Felipe Drugovich beating Jehan Daruvala to the top five finish but they both showed excellent overtaking prowess to pass Louis Delétraz, Ilott, Dan Ticktum and Gunayu Zhou who completed the top ten.
Ilott started the race from pole and will do so again for the sprint race after falling away on heavily degrading tyres.
| Pos. | Name | Team | Laps/Gap (seconds) |
| 1 | Robert Shwartzman | PREMA | 37 Laps |
| 2 | Nikita Mazepin | Hitech GP | +15.599 |
| 3 | Mick Schumacher | PREMA | +23.051 |
| 4 | Luca Ghiotto | Hitech GP | +32.775 |
| 5 | Felipe Drugovich | MP Motorsport | +36.241 |
| 6 | Jehan Daruvala | Carlin | +40.104 |
| 7 | Louis Delétraz | Charouz | +46.191 |
| 8 | Callum Ilott | UNI-Virtuosi | +48.780 |
| 9 | Dan Ticktum | DAMS | +49.652 |
| 10 | Guanyu Zhou | UNI-Virtuosi | +52.176 |
| 11 | Guiliano Alesi | HWA Racelab | +61.789 |
| 12 | Nobuharu Matsushita | MP Motorsport | +81.317 |
| 13 | Jack Aitken | Campos | +91.744 |
| 14 | Pedro Piquet | Charouz | +105.786 |
| 15 | Guilherme Samaia | Campos | +1 Lap |
| 16 | Yuki Tsunoda | Carlin | +1 Lap |
| 17 | Sean Gelael | DAMS | +1 Lap |
| 18 | Christian Lundgaard | ART | DNF (Mechanical) |
| 19 | Marcus Armstrong | ART | DNF (Contact) |
| 20 | Artem Markelov | HWA Racelab | DNF (Contact) |
| 21 | Marino Sato | Trident | DNF (Contact) |
| 22 | Roy Nissany | Trident | DNF (Contact) |
