Silverstone F3: Vips fends off Daruvala for win

Polesitter Vips made a solid getaway but came under heavy pressure from fast-starting Jehan Daruvala of Prema Racing, and was on the defensive already in the first quarter of the race.

A virtual safety car intervened on the seventh lap of 20, but after that Vips was parking his Hitech Grand Prix car on the apex of most corners to hold off the charging Daruvala.

That brought Marcus Armstrong – Daruvala’s Ferrari-supported Prema teammate – into the mix in third after working his way back up the order following a slow start from second.

Daruvala attempted a move at around the outside of Brooklands on Vips for two consecutive laps, running wide on the second attempt which meant he had to defend from front-row starter Armstrong, the two going side-by-side at Luffield.

But a full safety car for Raoul Hyman’s crash at Copse suspended the battle, the race restarting on lap 16, with only three laps with DRS available left after that.

Vips backed the field up inches apart and then launched off Copse at the restart to move clear until lap 18 when DRS was reactivated.

Daruvala was told under safety car to stay further back at Maggotts and Becketts to get a better run onto the Hangar Straight by his engineer, but ultimately he wasn’t able to get close enough to challenge Vips, who took a second win in as many weekends.

Daruvala held on for second ahead of Armstrong and Vips’ teammate Leonardo Pulcini.

The third Prema car of Robert Shwartzman rounded out the top five, passing ART Grand Prix’s Christian Lundgaard late on.

Daruvala narrowly outpaced Vips and Shwartzman to claim the two fastest lap points, and now leads the latter by those two points in the drivers' standings.

Pedro Piquet passed Lundgaard to take sixth for Trident Racing, as the Renault junior tumbled to seventh in the closing stages.

The youngest driver on the grid, Liam Lawson, will give Red Bull-backed drivers a chance at a double as he starts from reversed-grid pole in Sunday’s race for MP Motorsport, holding off HWA’s Jake Hughes in the closing laps.

Campos Racing’s Alex Peroni rounded out the top 10, having started 21st.

Race results:

Cla	#	Driver	Team	Laps	Time
1	21	Jüri Vips	HitechGP	20	-
2	27	Jehan Daruvala	Prema Powerteam	20	0.8
3	26	Marcus Armstrong	Prema Powerteam	20	1.3
4	20	Leonardo Pulcini	HitechGP	20	1.9
5	28	Robert Shwartzman	Prema Powerteam	20	2.2
6	18	Pedro Piquet	Trident	20	5.3
7	3	Christian Lundgaard	ART Grand Prix	20	6.8
8	4	Liam Lawson	MP Motorsport	20	7.1
9	11	Jake Hughes	HWA AG	20	7.3
10	23	Alex Peroni	Campos Racing	20	8.3
11	1	David Beckmann	ART Grand Prix	20	8.8
12	22	Ye Yifei	HitechGP	20	9.2
13	30	Felipe Drugovich	Carlin	20	11.2
14	14	Yuki Tsunoda	Jenzer Motorsport	20	13.7
15	7	Lirim Zendeli	Charouz Racing System	20	14.6
16	8	Fabio Scherer	Charouz Racing System	20	15.9
17	6	Richard Verschoor	MP Motorsport	20	18.5
18	19	Niko Kari	Trident	20	19.3
19	2	Max Fewtrell	ART Grand Prix	20	19.8
20	25	Sebastian Fernandez	Campos Racing	20	20.0
21	12	Keyvan Andres	HWA AG	20	20.5
22	10	Bent Viscaal	HWA AG	20	21.2
23	16	Andreas Estner	Jenzer Motorsport	20	21.5
24	5	Simo Laaksonen	MP Motorsport	20	21.7
25	29	Teppei Natori	Carlin	20	21.9
26	31	Logan Sargeant	Carlin	20	28.7
27	17	Devlin DeFrancesco	Trident	20	55.4
28	9	Raoul Hyman	Charouz Racing System	10	10 laps
29	15	Federico Malvestiti	Jenzer Motorsport	6	14 laps
30	24	Alessio Deledda	Campos Racing	6	14 laps
View full results