Silverstone European F3: Eriksson defeats Ilott for race two win

Ilott made a decent getaway from pole, but Eriksson, from third on the grid, got into his slipstream on the Wellington Straight and dived around the outside of the Briton at Brooklands.

Eriksson put the hammer down and his Motopark Dallara-Volkswagen crossed the line 1.947 seconds in front on the opening lap, the Swede extending that advantage to almost three seconds.

After struggling with tyre warm-up during the early laps, Ilott began to close up, and the Prema Powerteam Dallara-Mercedes was within one second of Eriksson after 10 of the 19 laps.

Eriksson pushed again to inch away, and when Ilott lost a further second on the penultimate lap the victory was in the bag, with Eriksson also taking the championship lead.

"The start was really good for me," said Eriksson.

"It was quite lucky for me on the dry side of the grid, and I set up a plan to overtake Callum into Turn 6 [Brooklands].

"So I got a really good exit from Turn 4 [The Loop] and went for the outside - it was quite tight but I made it.

"I felt immediately I was the fastest and used the tyres, everything, to pull a gap, and then I was managing that."

First-race winner Lando Norris started this race on the front row, but he was on the damper side of the track after overnight rain and his tardy getaway dropped him initially to ninth, while fast-starting Jake Hughes propelled his Hitech GP car from fifth - on the dry side - to third.

Maximilian Gunther, who was also on the damp side, managed to maintain his fourth grid slot at the start, and put pressure on Hughes in the early laps, but the Prema man then fell away from the Birmingham driver, who took a lonely third.

Gunther's second half of the race was taken up with a stern defence of fourth place from the Carlin machine of Jake Dennis.

Three laps from the end, Gunther and Dennis ran side by side through Brooklands, Luffield, Woodcote and even Copse, but the German just managed to get his nose in front at Maggotts to defend fourth.

The fight behind centred on the recovering Norris's attempts to prise sixth place away from Mick Schumacher.

On the penultimate lap Norris tried to brave it out around the outside of Copse Corner, but ran wide, allowing Guan Yu Zhou into seventh at Maggotts.

Jehan Daruvala also had momentum on Norris and was able to grab eighth place into Stowe.

Joey Mawson initially held seventh and had an early battle with Norris, but dropped back and was beaten to the final point by Harrison Newey.

RESULTS - 19 LAPS: