Chilton wins finale at Brands

Although he had taken maximum points and first among the British championship contenders by finishing third behind guest racers Jules Bianchi and Sam Bird in Portugal a week earlier, Chilton's Brands success marked his maiden on-the-road F3 win.

The Carlin driver made an excellent getaway from the outside of the front row to out-drag team-mate Daniel Ricciardo, who fell back to fourth on the run to the first corner.

From there the race was Chilton's to lose, but he had the pace to build a small cushion over his pursuers.

He constructed a 4s gap, only to see it wiped out when the safety car was deployed for four laps to clear the smashed car of Max Snegirev at Westfield and the stranded car of his West-Tec team-mate Ma Quing Hua, who failed to get off the line.

Chilton backed the field up on the run through the final bend and sprinted away well at the restart. From there he simply reeled off the laps to break his duck - collecting the spoils of victory for the first time in three years of trying.

Fortec's Riki Christodoulou trailed Chilton home again, this time to take second place, while invitation entry Marcus Ericsson completed the podium for Double R, just ahead of series champion Ricciardo.

This quartet all lapped within 0.2-0.4s of each other and no one else was able to lap in the 1m18s bracket at any point during the race.

Thus Carlin's Henry Arundel finished a distant fifth after making a good start to jump Double R's Daisuke Nakajima and briefly challenge Ricciardo. However, he may face a time penalty after coming under investigation for a jumped start.

Hitech Racing's Walter Grubmuller rounded out the top six, while Nakajima resisted the close attentions of T-Sport's Wayne Boyd to take seventh.

Boyd's T-Sport team-mate Adriano Buzaid and Double R's Carlos Huertas completed the top 10, some 5s further back, while Gabriel Dias (T-Sport) finished his debut season on a high by taking the National Class honours in 12th overall behind Fortec's Victor Garcia.

                    
Pos  Driver              Team       Car     Time/Gap
 1.  Max Chilton         Carlin     D/V   31m16.848s
 2.  Riki Christodoulou  Fortec     D/M     + 0.967s
 3.  Marcus Ericsson     Double R   D/M     + 2.552s
 4.  Daniel Ricciardo    Carlin     D/V     + 3.576s
 5.  Henry Arundel       Carlin     D/V    + 14.887s
 6.  Walter Grubmuller   Hitech     D/M    + 15.303s
 7.  Daisuke Nakajima    Double R   D/M    + 15.794s
 8.  Wayne Boyd          T-Sport    D/V    + 16.462s
 9.  Adriano Buzaid      T-Sport    D/V    + 21.750s
10.  Carlos Huertas      Double R   D/M    + 22.003s
11.  Victor Garcia       Fortec     D/M    + 22.522s
12.  Gabriel Dias        T-Sport    D/H    + 30.613s
13.  Jay Bridger         Litespeed  M/H    + 31.073s
14.  Philip Major        Carlin     D/V    + 31.642s
15.  Daniel McKenzie     Fortec     D/H    + 41.465s
16.  Joe Ghanem          Carlin     D/H    + 59.614s
17.  Victor Correa       Litespeed  S/H  + 1m02.655s

Retirements:

     Maxim Snegirev      West-Tec   D/H  4 laps
     Qinghua Ma          West-Tec   D/H  0 laps
     Hywel Lloyd         CF         D/H  0 laps