Lando Norris led from start to finish in race one at Zandvoort to further close the gap in the championship standings to Maximilian Günther, who was forced to settle for third.
The Briton retained the lead at the start and held off the early challenge of Joel Eriksson to secure his sixth victory of the FIA European Formula 3 Championship season.
The start was a hectic one, with Ferdinand Habsburg dropping from his front row grid slot to fifth, allowing Eriksson, Günther and Callum Ilott through, but Guan Yu Zhou made an aggressive move into turn one that saw the Chinese driver hit the innocent Ralf Aron, who in turn hit the equally innocent David Beckmann.
Aron’s car ended up in the gravel trap, but Beckmann found himself upside down after his Motopark car dug into the gravel, however the German was unharmed., while the safety car was deployed while the two cars were removed.
On the restart, Eriksson pressed Norris for the lead into turn one but was rebuked, while Habsburg found a way back through on Ilott around the outside of the same corner to recover to fourth.
Norris gradually pulled a gap to Eriksson, with the Carlin driver ending up 8.974 seconds clear at the chequered flag, while Prema Powerteam’s Günther was a further 2.679 seconds down in third to retain his lead in the championship standings.
Ilott was unable to regain the position despite keeping the pressure on Habsburg, while Mick Schumacher finished sixth for Prema Powerteam after his team-mate Zhou was handed a drive-through penalty for his part in the first lap, first corner crash.
Pedro Piquet took seventh for Van Amersfoort Racing ahead of Jake Hughes of Hitech Grand Prix, with Jehan Daruvala and Harrison Newey completing the points scorers in ninth and tenth.
Zandvoort Race 1 Result
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