28.04.2019

Marino Sato took his first victory in Formula 3 with an assured drive in the second Euroformula Open race at Paul Ricard.

A poor start for poleman Liam Lawson, followed up by Lawson then clashing with Motopark team-mate Yuki Tsunoda, gave Sato room at the front to drive mistake-free race.

Even when team-mate Lawson finally got past Teo Martín Motorsport’s Guilherme Samaia for second, Sato was able to match his times and ended up taking a comfortable 3.530 second victory.

The lap one clash with Tsunoda, where the pair made side-on contact going down the pit straight, is still under investigation and means that Lawson’s second place is only provisional.

If a penalty is applied, this would hand Samaia his best ever result in Euroformula. The Brazilian challenged Lawson for second place in the first half of the race, but settled for third ahead of team-mate Lukas Dunner thereon.

As in race one, Double R Racing’s Linus Lundqvist got involved in lots of on-track battles and took fifth place after a lengthy tussle with Tsunoda.

Behind them were Carlin’s Christian Hahn and Teppei Natori, the second Double R car of Jack Doohan, and Motopark driver Julian Hanses. A overtake at the Mistral Straight chicane between Hahn and Doohan is also under investigation as Hahn cut the chicane.

One of the fiercest battles in the race was between Fortec Motorsports team-mates Cameron Das and Calan Williams, who finished 15th and 16th.

RP Motorsport’s Artem Petrov managed to beat them both, but his team-mates were not so lucky; Pierre-Louis Chovet retired, and Javier Gonzalez was unable to take the start.