23.02.2019

Swedish ace Linus Lindqvist, the reigning BRDC British F.3 champion, fought past Lukas Dunner to take victory in Race 2 of the Euroformula Open Winter Series at Paul Ricard, at the wheel of the Piedrafita-powered Dallara F312 of Campos Racing.

After reversed grid poleman Guilherme Samaia dropped down the order in the early laps it became a two-way fight up front between Samaia’s Teo Martin Motorsport team-mate Dunner and Campos Racing’s Lundqvist. Dunner held on to the lead until lap 10, and after conceding first place to Lundqvist he lost further positions to Carlin’s Christian Hahn and Teppei Natori in the final laps through mistakes under pressure. Hahn finished 0.738 seconds behind the winner in second, with Natori topping the rookie classification in third. Both repeated their results of Race 1.

“Campos gave me a great car to fight with,” said Lundqvist. “[Dunner and I] were fighting more or less throughout the race. Maybe not wheel-to-wheel, but it was hard racing and you had to push constantly.”

Although he was the fastest driver in the race, Carlin’s Nicolai Kjaergaard wasn’t able to catch Dunner on the final lap and finished a distant fifth behind the Austrian.Samaia and Teo Martin team-mate Aldo Festante were a closely matched sixth and seventh after the former’s early lack of pace, while Billy Monger came home eighth after struggling with clutch problems like in Race 1. Regardless, he was still able to beat Alessio Deledda, who struggled for pace in his Campos car.

After winning the first race by a convincing margin, Nobuharu Matsushita decided not to start the second encounter, with the Carlin driver leaving his sixth place starting spot empty on the grid.