Spa British F3: Ed Jones beats Sean Galael to complete hat-trick
Ed Jones made it a hat-trick of British Formula 3 Championship wins at Spa, but was made to work hard for Saturday's victory by Carlin stablemate Sean Gelael
Gelael got a great run through Eau Rouge to take the lead on the opening lap and kept Jones at bay for the first five laps.
On the sixth lap, Jones pulled off a pass on the run to Les Combes, with two wheels on the grass on the left-hand side.
While Gelael stayed close, Jones was able to hang on to complete a perfect comeback weekend after injury.
With Roberto Merhi not starting this race owing to concerns over his late engine problem in race two, John Bryant-Meisner took the maximum championship score, as the European F3-spec cars of Jones and Gelael were not running for points.
The Swede had a solitary race in third overall in his Performance Racing Dallara-Volkswagen to comfortably accomplish his mission.
A great getaway from Nabil Jeffri promoted the Malaysian to fourth, but he lost out in a hectic early battle with the Fortec Motorsport duo of Martin Cao and Matt Rao.
Rao managed to get ahead of Cao on the seventh lap, and survived a late attack from the Chinese racer to extend his championship lead.
Sam MacLeod lost places on the first lap and finally managed to wriggle free of a fight with Indy Dontje. Both then passed Jeffri to take sixth and seventh places respectively.
Jeffri then had to defend from Peter Li in the closing stages to take eighth, while Nikita Zlobin passed Andy Chang on the penultimate lap to complete the top 10.
Results - 14 laps: Pos Driver Team/Car Time/Gap 1. Ed Jones Carlin Dallara-VW 31m53.571s 2. Sean Gelael Carlin Dallara-VW +1.092s 3. John Bryant-Meisner Performance Dallara-VW +21.952s 4. Matt Rao Fortec Dallara-Merc +31.085s 5. Martin Cao Fortec Dallara-Merc +32.679s 6. Sam MacLeod Carlin Dallara-VW +36.563s 7. Indy Dontje Motopark Dallara-VW +40.912s 8. Nabil Jeffri Motopark Dallara-VW +43.245s 9. Peter Li Carlin Dallara-VW +43.561s 10. Nikita Zlobin ADM Dallara-VW +50.843s 11. Andy Chang Double R Dallara-Merc +51.050s 12. Kang Ling ADM Dallara-VW +1m05.805s 13. Camren Kaminsky Double R Dallara-Merc +1m09.535s
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