BWT Arden's Anthoine Hubert claimed his first FIA Formula 2 Championship victory after a closely fought battle with Carlin's Louis Deletraz with the race being won by less than a tenth of a second.
The 2018 GP3 champion got a storming getaway from the grid and led out of the St.Devote, however, it wasn't plain sailing for the Frenchman after coming under late pressure from Carlin's Louis Deletraz in the final laps of the race.
The Swiss driver ramped up the pressure on Hubert late on and hounded the Arden driver into some small mistakes but was unable to take advantage.
On the final lap, Hubert got sideways out of the Anthony Noughes corner which allowed Deletraz to get alongside as they dashed to the finish line. The winning margin a nail-bitingly close 0.059s.
Renault-backed Guan Yuzhou rounded out the podium for UNI Virtuosi ahead of the MP Motorsport Artem Markelov, the Chinese driver jumped the Russian at the start of the race and had to soak up the pressure being handed out by Markelov for the rest of the race
Dorian Boccolacci held on to his fifth-place starting position but was unable to keep to the same pace as the leading quartet, finishing over ten seconds behind Markelov.
DAMS' Sergio Sette Camara kept hold of sixth but came under late pressure from the new championship leader Nyck De Vries who had managed to pass Nobuhara Matsushita for seventh.
Mazepin claimed the final point after finishing in eighth, moving up from his tenth place starting position.
Matsushita had started seventh but lost out to De Vries and Mazepin in an unseen move on track leaving the Honda-backed driver without points ahead of Nicholas Latifi in tenth.
The race wasn't without incident as Luca Ghiotto hit Tatiana Calderon into the outside barrier at Mirabeau on lap 3, the Colombian driver walked away but was later seen with ice on her hand after the impact.
Ghiotto then got himself into just a few laps later in further contact after diving up the inside of Mahaveer Raghunathan at the Fairmont Hotel hairpin, the damage was enough to put both drivers out of the race.
Sean Gelael then hit the Trident of Giuliano Alesi twice on lap 18, once into the Fairmont Hotel hairpin and then once more into the Nouvelle chicane which ended the Frenchman's race.
Formula 2 will return to action at Le Castellet on June 21-23.
