Jehan Daruvala withstood race-long pressure from Maximilian Günther to secure a maiden FIA European Formula 3 Championship victory at the Norisring on Sunday.
Daruvala took the lead at the start, jumping ahead of pole sitter Günther, and despite constant pressure from the Prema Powerteam driver, the Indian racer gave Carlin their second win of the day after Lando Norris’ earlier triumph.
The gap between Daruvala and Günther was never more than half a second throughout the race, with just 0.458 seconds splitting them when the chequered flag fell at the end of lap thirty-nine.
Behind them, the battle for the final podium position went down to the wire, with Norris edging passed Ralf Aron with just a handful of laps to go, thanks to a small mistake heading into turn one for the Hitech Grand Prix driver.
Norris had dropped to seventh on the opening lap before moving back up to run fifth, first disposing of Jake Hughes for fourth with thirteen laps remaining, before edging up to Aron and capitalising on the Estonian’s turn one error to take third.
It was the second time in the day that Aron has lost a potential podium, after dropping from the lead of the race to fifth earlier on, but at least this time the Estonian was able to finish fourth, just ahead of team-mate Hughes.
David Beckmann scored his first points of the weekend in sixth for Motopark, just ahead of his championship-contending team-mate Joel Eriksson, who ended a disappointing weekend for the Swede in seventh place, ahead of Carlin’s Ferdinand Habsburg.
Another championship contender who endured a tough weekend at the Norisring was Callum Ilott, with the Briton making a couple of late-race passes on Nikita Mazepin and Guan Yu Zhou to finish ninth, with Mazepin the final points scorer in tenth ahead of Joey Mawson and Zhou.
There were two Full Course Yellows during the race, the first of which was caused by Mick Schumacher stopping on track just after the exit of turn one after contact with Pedro Piquet broke the right-rear suspension of his Prema Powerteam car, while the second was caused when Tadasuke Makino retired in the turn one run-off after colliding with Harrison Newey and breaking his right-front suspension.
Norisring Race 3 Result
[table id=2195 /]