Callum Ilott secured his second victory of 2016 at the Red Bull Ring but the race was overshadowed by a huge crash between Ryan Tveter, Zhi Cong Li and Pedro Piquet.
Van Amersfoort Racing’s Ilott secured the win by 3.472s, but the race was red-flagged when Tveter spun his Carlin machine at turn five, spinning back onto the circuit, but his team-mate Li was unsighted through the dust, striking the American’s stationary car at high speed.
Li’s car was launched high into the air, barrel-rolling in the process before landing in the gravel trap. Piquet, who was following Li, also clipped Tveter’s car, and was lucky to avoid a roll of his own.
The race was immediately stopped, with all three drivers taken to the medical centre, with officials revealing that Li was awake and alert following his roll, Tveter had minor injuries while Piquet was unhurt.
Ilott’s victory is being looked into by the stewards, with a decision to be made whether the Briton made a move on Maximilian Günther on the opening lap before the safety car had been deployed due to two cars being stranded on track.
Tveter had spun at turn two on that opening lap causing a collision between the following Arjun Maini and debutant Weiron Tan, whose Carlin car was launched onto the top of the ThreeBond with T-Sport car.
Ilott swept around the outside of Günther at turn four, with doubts whether it was before or after the safety car boards, while on the restart Lance Stroll jumped ahead of team-mate Günther to move into second.
Günther and Mikkel Jensen battled for third for a number of laps, with the two switching positions a couple of times, before Günther asserted himself to secure the podium ahead of the Mücke Motorsport driver.
George Russell and Nick Cassidy were also involved in a battle of their own, with the Hitech GP driver finishing ahead of the Prema Powerteam driver despite the two switching positions a handful of times as well.
David Beckmann secured his first points in the championship with seventh for Mücke Motorsport ahead of Harrison Newey of Van Amersfoort Racing, while Ralf Aron of Prema Powerteam and Ben Barnicoat of Hitech GP completed the points scorers.
Niko Kari was on course for points before being handed a drive-through penalty for a robust move on Alessio Lorandi.
Red Bull Ring Race 1 Result
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