Aragon Eurocup: Defourny controls first race of season

Starting from pole, Defourny led Norris into Turn 1, but was under serious pressure from the reigning MSA Formula and Toyota Racing Series champion over the opening laps.

However, Defourny, who had spent 2015 in FR2.0 NEC, soon weathered the storm, easing to the chequered flag to secure the win in what was his eighth Eurocup start.

As Defourny escaped his grasp, Norris had to focus on the advances of former Lotus F1 junior Dorian Boccolacci behind him, only for the Tech 1 driver to drop off and be passed by Norris' teammate Jehan Daruvala.

The Josef Kaufmann Racing duo would go on to complete the podium behind Defourny, with Boccolacci losing pace dramatically and eventually dropping out of the top 10.

As such, fourth place was inherited by Harrison Scott and fifth went to Robert Shwartzman, who had passed Bruno Baptista.

Henrique Chaves was seventh, ahead of the Russian duo of Nikita Troitskiy and Alexey Korneev and tenth-placed Ferdinand Habsburg.

French rookie Gabriel Aubry was on course for a debut top-five finish when he stopped in the closing stages of the race - and the same fate had befallen his fellow French F4 graduate Sacha Fenestraz earlier.

The only other retirements of the race were Alex Perullo and Hugo de Sadeleer, the former hitting the latter at a high speed in Turn 13 after an unsuccessful attempt to pass Rodrigo Pflucker.

Race 1 results:

Pos	Driver	Team	Time/Gap
1	Max Defourny	R-ace GP	27'16.334
2	Lando Norris	Josef Kaufmann Racing	1.847
3	Jehan Daruvala	Josef Kaufmann Racing	7.349
4	Harrison Scott	AVF by Adrian Valles	7.724
5	Robert Shwartzman	Josef Kaufmann Racing	12.632
6	Bruno Baptista	Fortec Motorsports	16.519
7	Henrique Chaves Jr.	AVF by Adrian Valles	18.894
8	Nikita Troitskiy	Fortec Motorsports	20.268
9	Alexey Korneev	JD Motorsport	21.494
10	Ferdinand Habsburg	Fortec Motorsports	22.297
11	Dorian Boccolacci	Tech 1 Racing	24.056
12	Nerses Isaakyan	AVF by Adrian Valles	27.159
13	Will Palmer	R-ace GP	27.479
14	Vasily Romanov	Fortec Motorsports	27.687
15	Julien Falchero	R-ace GP	27.951
16	Rodrigo Pflucker	Cram Motorsport	29.179
17	James Allen	JD Motorsport	31.379
18	David Porcelli	MGR Motorsport	41.685
19	Julia Pankiewicz	AVF by Adrian Valles	50.361
20	David Richert	Cram Motorsport	50.964
Ret	Gabriel Aubry	Tech 1 Racing
Ret	Hugo de Sadeleer	Tech 1 Racing
Ret	Alex Perullo	Technorace
Ret	Sacha Fenestraz	Tech 1 racing