Lando Norris took a firm grip on the championship as he secured a second victory of the weekend in the final race at the Nurburgring on Sunday.
The British driver came into the weekend eleven points to the good ahead of Maximilian Günther, but two wins and a second place, coupled with just one top ten finish for the German, sees the Carlin driver leave Germany seventy-three points ahead.
Norris slipped into second position at the start of the race but, much like in race two earlier in the day, found his way passed Callum Ilott early on, and despite pressure coming from Jake Hughes, he was able to control the race to take his sixth victory in nine races, and his ninth of 2017.
Hughes also managed to find his way passed the struggling Ilott for second, with the Hitech Grand Prix ace completing by far his strongest weekend of the season, where he twice took second place as well as his first win of the year in race two.
Unlike in race two, where Brits filled all three spots, Estonian Ralf Aron denied a second clean sweep, with the Hitech Grand Prix driver also managing to edge ahead of Ilott early on, although the Prema Powerteam driver halted the slide, eventually finishing fourth, just ahead of Carlin’s Jehan Daruvala.
Harrison Newey drove a great defensive drive to claim sixth for Van Amersfoort Racing, but was over ten seconds adrift of Daruvala, with the Briton able to withstand the pressure from Günther and Joel Eriksson for much of the race.
Both Günther and Eriksson qualified well down the order but profited from incidents at the front of the field to jump into the points, the biggest of which saw Guan Yu Zhou and Ferdinand Habsburg collide at turn one on the opening lap.
Zhou appeared to get a good start and was challenging for a position inside the top four, only for Habsburg to lock up his brakes and collect the Chinese driver, with both ending up in the gravel trap at the outside of the corner, which brought out the safety car whilst both cars could be craned away.
Max Defourny secured ninth for his first points of his Formula 3 career, also for Van Amersfoort Racing, despite being forced to take avoiding action when Nikita Mazepin went off the track at turn seven and rejoined in a dangerous manner.
Mazepin initially was the final driver to score a point, but a subsequent penalty for pushing Defourny off the track relegated him down to sixteenth, promoting another series debutant, Sacha Fenestraz, into the top ten for Carlin.
Just six races remain in the championship, and with a seventy-three-point advantage, Norris will have the opportunity to clinch the title next time out at the Red Bull Ring, and will do so if he leaves Austria more than seventy-five-points clear.
Nurburgring Race 3 Result
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