Jack Doohan spent the final day of F2’s pre-season test focusing on race runs rather than outright pace in contrast to a number of his rivals.

Doohan, who spearheads the Alpine Academy line-up this year, completed a total of 75 laps across the two sessions at the Bahrain International Circuit ahead of his second campaign with Virtuosi Racing.

The 20-year-old from the Gold Coast was ninth quickest in session one with a time of one minute 47.900s, nearly three seconds down on the leading lap from Campos Racing’s Ralph Boschung.

In the second session, with more of the field split between setting a fast time and long-run pace, Doohan was 19th on the timesheet of the 21 that set a time. His best lap was marginally quicker at 1:47.572s.

To underline the pace possible at the Sakhir circuit, Boschung’s Campos Racing team-mate Kush Maini was fastest overall with a time of 1:42.623s.

Eight other drivers were within seven-tenths of a second of India’s Maini before a gap then of over 2.2s to 10th quickest Richard Verschoor for Van Amersfoort Racing.

Cameras did pick up one highlight of the day for Doohan as he played with his steering wheel whilst heading towards the garages.

Doohan came close to dropping the valuable piece of equipment prior to making what the Formula 2 Twitter feed described as a “nice save” before he nonchalantly carried on walking.

The F2 season commences across the opening F1 weekend in Bahrain that runs from March 3-5.

Nice save, @jackdoohan33! 👐🥅#F2 #F2Testing pic.twitter.com/x4f7ojgEIr

— Formula 2 (@Formula2) February 16, 2023