Ricciardo wins on debut at Oulton

The Red Bull-backed Australian sat behind his pole-sitting Carlin team-mate Max Chilton in second place for most of the race, with his mirrors full of the Mygale Mercedes of Nick Tandy.

Having pulled out a comfortable lead early on, Chilton's challenge fell away in the closing stages once he learned he would be penalised for a jump start.

He gradually fell back into the clutches of the chasing pair and lost out to both on consecutive laps with only a handful of tours left, but not before infuriating the rapid Tandy who felt Chilton had blocked him deliberately for a lap while Ricciardo tried to escape with the lead.

"I'm really pleased to have won my first F3 race," said Ricciardo. "The team said to me over the radio that Max had jumped the start and had a time penalty, so I knew I was racing for the lead. I pushed really hard towards the end and Nick kept me under pressure all the way."

Chilton's fate was already sealed and he finished third on the road but dropped to 17th after the flag, with one minute added to his time for the jump start.

That left race two poleman Walter Grubmuller to inherit the final podium place for former champion team Hitech, well clear of debutant Daisuke Nakajima. The Japanese rookie held third for the first few laps before he dropped behind Tandy and Grubmuller and spent the rest of the race defending from fellow series debutant Riki Christodoulou.

Expected frontrunning squad T-Sport, which has struggled so far this weekend, showed better pace in the race today. Adriano Buzaid and Wayne Boyd benefited from trouble at the start for Henry Arundel, Carlos Huertas and Oliver Oakes and finished sixth and seventh.

They also set quickest laps 0.8s slower than Tandy's new lap record 1m28.772s in the race - an improvement of half a second compared with Buzaid's gap to the front-running pace in qualifying.

Pos Driver                   Team               Car            Time
 1. Daniel Ricciardo         Carlin             D/V      29m53.932s
 2. Nick Tandy               JTR                M/M         +2.459s
 3. Walter Grubmuller        Hitech             D/M         +9.156s
 4. Daisuke Nakajima         Double R           D/M        +16.489s
 5. Riki Christodoulou       Fortec             D/M        +17.190s
 6. Adriano Buzaid           T-Sport            D/V        +22.257s
 7. Wayne Boyd               T-Sport            D/V        +23.997s
 8. Hywel Lloyd              CF                 D/H        +25.253s
 9. Oliver Oakes             Carlin             D/V        +25.801s
10. Victor Garcia            Fortec             D/M        +34.267s
11. Daniel McKenzie          Fortec (N)         D/H        +39.580s
12. Henry Arundel            Carlin             D/V        +40.095s
13. Stephane Richelmi        Barazi Epsilon     D/M        +51.477s
14. Carlos Huertas           Double R           D/M        +52.853s
15. Gabriel Dias             T-Sport (N)        D/H      +1m01.030s
16. Jay Bridger              West-Tec           M/H      +1m01.559s
17. Max Chilton              Carlin             D/V      +1m06.134s
18. Maxim Snegirev           West-Tec (N)       D/H          +1 lap

Retirements

    Victor Correa            Litespeed (N)      S/H         11 laps


Fastest lap, Tandy 1m28.772s