Lando Norris was forced to work hard for victory at the Red Bull Ring as he and Max Defourny battled for the lead in race one on Saturday, switching places on a number of occasions.
Norris had started from pole position, and the Josef Kaufmann Racing driver lead the majority of the laps around the Austrian circuit, but rival Defourny made numerous attempts to take the win himself, only for the R-ace GP driver to find the Briton fighting back again and again.
Norris made the decisive move on the penultimate lap of the race, and it looked for a little while that Defourny would lose second as Ferdinand Habsburg passed the Belgian on the run down to the first corner on the final lap, only for the Fortec Motorsports driver to make a mistake at turn two to allow Defourny back ahead.
Habsburg then survived a last corner challenge by Harrison Scott to claim the final podium position. Scott had spent the majority of the race behind Jehan Daruvala, with the Briton looking frustrated behind the Indian, particularly after the Josef Kaufmann Racing driver had driven off track to defend his position at turn one early on, remaining ahead of the AVF driver.
Hugo de Sadeleer drove a composed race to finish sixth for Tech 1 Racing, well clear of seventh placed Julien Falchero of R-ace GP, with Alexey Korneev of JD Motorsport eighth.
Bruno Baptista secured two points after finishing ninth for Fortec Motorsports, while Dorian Boccolacci ended the race tenth despite having been battling hard with team-mate de Sadeleer in the early stages of the race.
Unfortunately for the other Britons in the race, both Finlay Hutchison and Will Palmer retired, the former with a suspension issue on his Mark Burdett Motorsport machine, and the latter with a technical issue on his R-ace GP machine that forced him to slow on track.
Red Bull Ring Race 1 Result
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