Colton Herta ended the 2016 EuroFormula Open season with victory at the Circuit de Catalunya, taking advantage of a mistake by Leonardo Pulcini to take the lead and then holding off the ever-present challenge of Ferdinand Habsburg until the chequered flag.
The Carlin Motorsports driver was unable to shake off the presence of Drivex School driver Habsburg throughout the duration of the seventeen-lap race, with the battle initially for second position behind Pulcini before the series champion made a mistake and dropped to third.
Herta ultimately won the race by 0.601 seconds, but the gap was hovering around the six-to-eight tenths mark throughout the race, although Habsburg was unable to make any real move to take the win himself.
Pulcini caught the battling pair again following his mistake, but the Campos Racing driver was forced to settle for the bottom step of the podium, but it did bring to an end a fantastic, championship-winning season for the young Italian.
After an early race pass on Antoni Ptak, Dorian Boccolacci did his best to keep up with the trio ahead of him, but like Pulcini was forced to settle for position, with the Teo Martin Motorsport driver adding fourth place on Sunday to his podium finish from Saturday.
Ptak was unable to match the pace of the quartet ahead, ultimately finishing 18.637 seconds down on Herta, but the RP Motorsport driver withstood almost race long pressure from Diego Menchaca of Campos Racing, while in the closing laps, Damiano Fioravanti of RP Motorsport and Vasily Romanov of Drivex School joined the battle for fifth.
Tanart Sathienthirakul made it three RP Motorsport machines inside the top ten, with the Thai driver edging out Teo Martin Motorsport’s Nikita Zlobin.
Tatiana Calderon was on course to finish eighth for RP Motorsport, but a late race spin saw her lose a number of positions, and she was forced to settle for twelfth at the chequered flag, just behind Campos Racing’s Julio Moreno.
Circuit de Catalunya Race 2 Result
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