Walker wins second Spa FR3.5 race

The P1 Motorsport driver opted to take an early mandatory pitstop on lap seven, and a string of quick laps then propelled the Jersey driver ahead of pole-sitter, and local hero, Bertrand Baguette.

"After the weekend we had in Barcelona, and not finishing yesterday, this is exactly what we needed," said Walker.

The Briton had started from the front row behind Baguette, but was squeezed to the inside at the La Source hairpin and was demoted to fourth place behind Miguel Molina and Charles Pic. But that pair out-braked themselves while battling into Les Combes and allowed Walker to take advantage and recover his original starting position.

Further back, Epsilon Euskadi team-mates Adrian Valles and Chris van der Drift collided at Malmedy, bringing out the safety car.

While Walker came in for rubber two laps into the pit window, Baguette deferred his stop for as long possible, until lap 12. In the intervening period Walker was consistently 0.7s a lap faster than the Draco driver, but Baguette had few alternative options on strategy having badly flat-spotted his front tyres in qualifying, forcing him to commit to a change of rears, and leaving him unable to beat Walker.

Molina survived his early grassy incident with Pic to take the bottom step of the podium for the second time in the weekend.

A sprinkling of rain over the last two laps spiced up an entertaining battle for fourth place. Move emerged from a heavily congested Bus Stop chicane on the last lap in the lead of a snake of cars, as just one second covered the fourth to seventh placed runners.

Carlin's Oliver Turvey took advantage of the tricky conditions to wrestle fifth place from Marcos Martinez in a final corner scrum, but the manoeuvre is under investigation as the Briton may have benefited from driving outside the bounds of the circuit.

Pos  Driver                Team               Time
 1.  James Walker          P1           47m45.056s
 2.  Bertrand Baguette     Draco        +   6.421s
 3.  Miguel Molina         Ultimate     +  11.983s
 4.  Daniel Move           P1           +  18.066s
 5.  Marcos Martinez       Pons         +  18.982s
 6.  Jaime Alguersuari     Carlin       +  19.008s
 7.  Adrian Zaugg          Interwetten  +  22.645s
 8.  Pasquale di Sabatino  RC           +  23.839s
 9.  Greg Mansell          Ultimate     +  24.362s
10.  Brendon Hartley       Tech 1       +  26.984s
11.  Sten Pentus           Fortec       +  28.785s
12.  Marco Barba           Draco        +  42.898s
13.  Frankie Provenzano    Prema        +  43.563s
14.  Oliver Turvey         Carlin       +  43.745s
15.  Fairuz Fauzy          Fortec       +  48.144s
16.  Tobias Hegewald       Interwetten  +  48.874s
17.  Federico Leo          Pons         +  57.682s
18.  Julian Leal           Prema        +1m07.657s

Retirements:

     Charles Pic           Tech 1          10 laps
     Anton Nebilitskiy     Comtec          10 laps
     Adrian Valles         Epsilon           1 lap
     Chris van der Drift   Epsilon           1 lap