Lance Stroll completed a trio of victories as his FIA European Formula 3 Championship career ended at the Hockenheimring on Sunday morning with a fourteenth victory of a championship winning campaign.
After a delay to proceedings due to foggy conditions, Stroll assumed the lead on lap two after starting fourth, and thereafter the Prema Powerteam driver was again in dominant form to win by 4.716 seconds.
Joel Eriksson had lead away from pole position, but the Motopark driver was forced to battle Stroll all the way around the opening lap, before losing out in the Mercedes Arena on lap two in a move that started back at the Spitzkehre hairpin.
Eriksson was untroubled in second, with the rookie champion pulling away from the chasing pack that initially was led by Nick Cassidy, but the Kiwi driver lost the final spot on the podium in the closing stages to a charging Jake Hughes.
Hughes had started on the front row of the grid but for a third consecutive race made a sluggish getaway, and found himself shuffled to fifth behind Cassidy and Sergio Sette Câmara.
The Carlin driver sat on the tail of Sette Câmara for a number of laps attempting to pass the young Brazilian before finally making a move stick on the run down to the Mercedes Arena after out-dragging the Motopark driver out of the hairpin.
Hughes then closed down the gap to Cassidy, and when the Prema Powerteam driver made a mistake at the Mercedes Arena, the Briton assumed the podium position and pulled away.
Alexander Sims also found his way passed Sette Câmara to take fifth, while Ben Barnicoat made it through to seventh for Hitech GP with a late pass of his own on Ralf Aron, while Maximilian Günther and Anthoine Hubert completed the top ten. With Sims again illegible for points, the final point of the season went to Guanyu Zhou of Motopark.
After starting third on the grid, Callum Ilott had a disappointing race, with the Van Amersfoort Racing driver having a nightmare first lap that saw him run off track at least four times, and was running well outside the points when he pulled into the pits to retire.
Race two podium finisher David Beckmann was also in the wars, colliding with Barnicoat and being forced to pit for a new front wing, meaning the Mücke Motorsport driver ended the race a lap down in eighteenth. Team-mate Mikkel Jensen did not take the start with the Dane complaining heavily about the handling of his car in the opening two races and without a fix coming, he pulled out of the event.
Hockenheimring Race 3 Result
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