Sacha Fenestraz brought himself firmly into championship contention with a great drive in difficult conditions to win race two at the Nurburgring on Sunday morning.
The Josef Kaufmann Racing driver was faced with a safety car start and treacherous conditions as rain fell around the circuit, and despite another safety car interruption for a pair of two-car crashes at turn one, Fenestraz controlled the pace superbly, winning by 3.915 seconds.
The French-Argentine driver had one moment of worry when Daniel Ticktum made an optimistic move down into turn one after the final restart, but the Arden Motorsport driver was unable to keep the position, and after that Fenestraz was able to pull away from the Red Bull-backed driver.
Robert Shwartzman had looked on course to claim the final spot on the podium for R-ace GP, with the Russian having made a good pass on Yifei Ye on lap eight for the position. However it all went wrong on the final lap, with Shwartzman running off track at turn one, which resulted in the championship leader finishing down in eighth position.
Ye secured his maiden Eurocup Formula Renault 2.0 Series podium as a result for Josef Kaufmann Racing, with the Chinese driver finishing just ahead of Tech 1 Racing’s Gabriel Aubry, who got the better of R-ace GP’s Will Palmer.
Max Defourny was another one to lose ground early on after a spin at turn two, but the Belgian was able to recover to sixth, making a final lap pass on Max Fewtrell around the outside of the final corner.
Thomas Randle led home a trio of Australians as the AVF by Adrian Vallés driver finished ninth, ahead of Luis Leeds of Josef Kaufmann Racing and Zane Goddard of Arden Motorsport, whilst another Australian, Alex Peroni, was left to rue a late mistake that dropped the Fortec Motorsports driver down from tenth to fifteenth on the penultimate lap.
The safety car was deployed on lap five, two laps after the race got underway properly following the safety car start, with Henrique Chaves making an optimistic move on Aleksandr Vartanyan into turn one that left the Portuguese driver beached in the gravel trap and saw the Russian JD Motorsport driver pit for a new front wing.
A few seconds after that tangle, Charles Milesi of R-ace GP and Ghislain Cordeel of Arden Motorsport also collided at the same turn, with the former retiring on the spot and the latter in the pits at the end of the lap. Neil Verhagen was another to retire having gone off at turn five in his Red Bull-liveried MP Motorsport machine and failing to get back on track.
Shwartzman retains his lead in the championship standings heading out of Germany on 198 points, six ahead of Fenestraz and ten ahead of Palmer.
Nurburgring Race 2 Result
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