Vanthoor: Mortara deserved to win

The eventual runner-up led briefly early in the race after Daniel Abt crashed out, but he could do nothing to defend against the hard-charging Mortara after making a mistake at a safety car restart on lap seven.

Although Vanthoor has not enjoyed the best of relationships with Mortara this season - following on-track collisions in the F3 Euro Series - he praised his team-mate this time for the job he did.

"I am happy with my second place, it is a really good result for this kind of race," said Vanthoor. "I really wanted to win but I must admit that Edoardo was stronger than me. He was faster and did a better job - and he deserves the win, and deserves to be in the history books as a two-time Macau winner."

Vanthoor said he was lucky not to get caught up in Abt's accident on lap three, having had a premonition that something was about to happen and backed off a little.

"I don't know why but for some reason I had this feeling that something was wrong," he said. "The corner before is normally a corner that is flat - I braked a little bit and came off the throttle and at that moment I saw him going in the wall. It was some kind of feeling that helped me, as he crashed pretty hard."

The safety car that came out for Abt's crash ultimately cost Vanthoor his best chance of winning the race - as at the restart Mortara was easily able to draft past him on the run down to Lisboa.

"It was good to have a safety car for Daniel, although for me it was not a help because I had built a little gap after the crash to Edoardo and he could not overtake me on the straight at that point," he said.

"At the beginning I had a pretty good restart but I pushed too much at the last corner. I went on the throttle too early and went too wide and, at the exit, I had to brake a little bit not to touch the wall.

"So I had an idea that Edoardo would take my slipstream and come beside me. We were pretty close under braking, as he was on the good line and I was on the dirty line and he managed to outbrake me. Then he did some good laps which I could not follow."