After getting the jump at the start, Matthieu Vaxiviere held off the challenge from Louis Deletraz to claim his second victory of 2016 in race one at the Red Bull Ring on Saturday.
Polesitter Deletraz was sluggish away and dropped behind both Vaxiviere and Egor Orudzhev, and with the Russian holding up the Swiss driver, Vaxiviere was able to pull over three seconds clear at the front.
However, once Deletraz found his way passed Orudzhev around the outside of turn four, a lap after the two banged wheels at turn two, he closed the gap down on the SMP Racing race leader to run just behind the Frenchman.
Vaxiviere however was able to control the race, even surviving a late race safety car period to retrieve the stricken Lotus of Rene Binder that had ground to a halt on the start/finish straight, and won by 0.977 seconds.
Unfortunately for Arden Motorsports’ Orudzhev, he was unable to benefit from his good start, dropping behind Tom Dillmann into fourth before pulling into the pits with a mechanical issue that saw the Russian lose a number of laps, although his team got him out towards the end of the race to get a test on their fix.
Championship leader Dillmann secured the final spot on the podium for AVF by Adrian Vallés, ahead of team-mate Alfonso Celis Jr, who held off the challenge of first Binder before Aurélien Panis took up the mantle when the Lotus driver pulled off the track to cause the safety car.
Roy Nissany had a quiet race in the second Lotus, but climbed to sixth with a good move on the safety car restart ahead of Teo Martin Motorsport’s Yu Kanamaru, who finished seventh ahead of team-mate Beitske Visser.
A mistake from Vitor Baptista allowed Marco Bonanomi to take ninth on his return to single seaters in the battle of the RP Motorsport team-mates, with Pietro Fittipaldi and Matevos Isaakyan just missing out on the points.
Red Bull Ring Race 1 Result
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