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Mortara wins in Hockenheim rain

Edoardo Mortara survived a late-race attack from Valterri Bottas to win the first Formula 3 Euro Series race of the weekend at Hockenheim in appalling weather conditions

Signature driver Mortara led from start to finish in the race, which started behind the safety car because of heavy rain that fell beforehand.

He initially pulled away from the field as Mucke's Roberto Merhi held a fast-starting Bottas off in the early laps. But the Finn was released when Merhi went off on the entry to the stadium section on lap eight.

Bottas then set about making up a gap of more than five seconds to Mortara, and he was able to take chunks of time every lap.

The gap was down to 1.2 seconds at the start of the penultimate lap, and Bottas then tried a lunge from a long way back into Turn 4 at the end of the backstraight.

Mortara saw the ART driver coming and left the door open for his rival to slide past the corner, and Bottas ran very wide and lost two seconds.

That left this year's champion to hang on for one more lap to take the win, while Bottas made a point by setting the fastest lap as the chequered flag came out.

Behind them, Marco Wittmann took a lonely third for Signature, while Alexander Sims (ART) held off a recovering Merhi for fourth.

Laurens Vanthoor (Signature) took sixth ahead of series returnee Christopher Zanella (Motopark Academy). Eighth place, and pole position for Sunday's season finale, went to Prema's Daniel Juncadella.

Front row starter Nicolas Marroc had a race to forget in Prema's other car. The Frenchman slipped down the order once the race was underway, and he was out before one racing lap was complete after colliding with Vanthoor at the Sachs Curve.

Pos  Driver                  Team       Car     Time/Gap
 1.  Edoardo Mortara         Signature  D/V   31m16.386s
 2.  Valtteri Bottas         ART        D/M     + 1.790s
 3.  Marco Wittmann          Signature  D/V     + 7.961s
 4.  Alexander Sims          ART        D/M    + 14.647s
 5.  Roberto Merhi           Mucke      D/M    + 18.185s
 6.  Laurens Vanthoor        Signature  D/V    + 28.059s
 7.  Christopher Zanella     Motopark   D/V    + 33.766s
 8.  Daniel Juncadella       Prema      D/M    + 35.000s
 9.  Antonio Felix da Costa  Motopark   D/V    + 47.944s
10.  Matias Laine            Motopark   D/V  + 1m01.873s
11.  Carlos Munoz            Mucke      D/M  + 1m18.155s
12.  Jim Pla                 ART        D/M  + 1m20.132s
13.  Sandro Zeller           Jo Zeller  D/M      + 1 lap

Retirements:

     Nicolas Marroc          Prema      D/M  2 laps

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