Brands British F3: Felipe Guimaraes takes first victory

The Brazilian trailed Fortec team-mate Will Buller away from the start, but for the second time this weekend Buller earned a drive-through penalty for a jumped start.

When the Northern Irishman served the penalty at the end of the fourth lap, Guimaraes was given a useful lead over Jann Mardenborough.

Mardenborough, who was being shadowed by Antonio Giovinazzi, could make little impression on Guimaraes, and on the 12th lap he dropped back to fifth when he made a mistake at Sheene curve.

That promoted the dominant race-one duo of Jazeman Jaafar and Jordan King.

Crucially, Jaafar snuck ahead of King on the exit of Paddock Hill Bend on the first lap and, despite lacking pace, was able to keep his title-chasing team-mate at bay.

A charging Buller set a succession of fastest laps as he clawed his back through the pack, but he also earned two more penalties, both for track-limits offences. This cost him a total of 35 seconds and dropped him to ninth (eighth in the championship class).

Even so, he had passed King on the penultimate lap into Druids, but the Englishman reinstatement to fourth on corrected times means he trims Buller's championship lead further to nine points, with Giovinazzi a further three adrift.

With Mardenborough out of the way, Giovinazzi attempted to close on leader Guimaraes but could not find enough pace to threaten the winner, who is mentored by ex-Formula 1 driver and 1974/5 British F3 ace Alex Ribeiro.

"I had a good start and Will got past me and I thought, 'Wow that was incredible!'" said Guimaraes. "We have been struggling to find a better set-up for me this weekend but today it worked better, it was faster and it was lap-by-lap consistent."

Mardenborough finished comfortably clear of Nicholas Latifi, who was not after all given a grid penalty for a yellow-flag offence in Saturday's race, but did pick up two track-limits penalties in this race, like Buller's costing 35s.

That moved Sean Gelael up to sixth, after climbing from the back of the grid and overtaking Tatiana Calderon.

Ed Jones took an impressive win in the National Class. After Saturday's retirement, he picked his way through his rivals and passed class points leader Sun Zheng, despite a power deficit on his European F3 Open-spec car, into Paddock on the 13th lap.

Chris Vlok failed to finish after spinning into the gravel at Clearways.

Results - 23 laps:

Pos  Driver              Team/Car                   Time/Gap
 1.  Felipe Guimaraes    Fortec Dallara-Merc      30m51.983s
 2.  Antonio Giovinazzi  Double R Dallara-Merc       +2.609s
 3.  Jazeman Jaafar      Carlin Dallara-VW          +13.063s
 4.  Jordan King         Carlin Dallara-VW          +17.290s
 5.  Jann Mardenborough  Carlin Dallara-VW          +19.918s
 6.  Sean Gelael         Double R Dallara-Merc      +27.889s
 7.  Tatiana Calderon    Double R Dallara-Merc      +38.515s
 8.  Ed Jones            West-Tec Dallara-Toyota    +44.396s*
 9.  Will Buller         Fortec Dallara-Merc        +50.279s**
10.  Nicholas Latifi     Carlin Dallara-VW        +1m00.390s**
11.  Zheng Sun           CF Dallara-Mugen         +1m03.468s*
12.  Peter Zhi Cong Li   Carlin Dallara-VW        +1m05.965s
13.  Cameron Twynham     West-Tec Dallara-Toyota  +1m10.669s*

Retirements:

     Chris Vlok          West-Tec Dallara-Toyota      8 laps*

* National class
** Inc 35s track-limits penalty