Silverstone Ferrari Challenge: Dario Caso wins eventful first race

The havoc began as soon as the flag had dropped, when poleman Marco Cioci was given a whack from behind by Motor/Malucelli driver Max Blancardi.

This forced Cioci to go wide at Abbey and dropped him to sixth. The resultant damage eventually caused Cioci to pit for repairs, losing the Motor/Piacenza man two laps.

This allowed Lorenzo Case into the lead, just ahead of Andrii Kruglyk and Stefano Gai. Kruglyk wrestled the lead from Case at Brooklands on lap two. Gai attempted to follow suit at Copse, but the pair collided and Case ended up in the gravel trap. Gai was then assaulted by Sergey Zlobin,

British driver Alexander Martin took the initiative from Kruglik at Club on lap three, but was forced to take a stop/go penalty after driving into the pitlane before he arrived on the grid.

This left Kruglyk with a seemingly safe gap back to Patrick Gobbo. But it would not be a straight run to the flag for the Ukrainian, who received a five-second penalty for not respecting the track limits.

By lap nine Patrick Gobbo was leading, but the man on a charge was Caso.

The Italian had despatched Robert Pergl at Brooklands for third on lap seven, and took the lead at Stowe three tours later when Gobbo ran wide.

Caso managed to hang on to win, but only just, as Kruglyk - who was leading on track - began to pull back the time lost to his penalty.

In a dramatic end to the race it was Caso who just took the victory by just 0.020 seconds from Kruglyk, with Gobbo coming home in third.

Meanwhile, Alexey Basov was the winner of the first Coppa Shell race after a tight battle with Raffaele Giannoni.