Carlin’s Nikita Troitskiy claimed his first European Formula 3 Championship victory in a shortened third race at Zandvoort after Julian Hanses’s car was awkwardly stranded in the gravel.
Troitskiy started third. He immediately jumped to second when front row starter Juri Vips bogged down off the line.
After shadowing Red Bull Formula 1 junior Daniel Ticktum in the opening stages, Troitskiy inherited the lead when Ticktum was handed a drivethrough penalty for marginally jumping the start. He later retired.
With 13 minutes of the 35-minute race remaining, Julian Hanses speared off-track at Turn 12. His car climbed the uphill gravel trap and hit the wall.
The safety car was deployed but with the recovery vehicles unable to climb the hill in order to retrieve Hanses’s Ma-Con-prepared machine, the race was red flagged. Troitskiy was declared the winner.
Guan Yu Zhou, was 1.8 seconds adrift of Troitskiy when the safety car was deployed. Without being able to mount an attack at a late-race restart, Prema Racing’s Zhou finished second.
Force India F1 junior Jehan Daruvala rounded out the podium. The Carlin driver vaulted from sixth on the grid to fourth before Turn 1, taking advantage of Vips’s near-stall and a poor launch from fifth on the grid for Fabio Scherer.
Marino Sato also demoted Scherer on the opening lap. Sato finished in fourth, while his Motopark team-mate Scherer ended up in fifth place.
Alex Palou finished sixth ahead of Ferdinand Habsburg in seventh. Jonathan Aberdien had to defend from Artem Petrov mid-race to hold onto eighth place.
Petrov, in turn, faced significant pressure from Enaam Ahmed before the final safety car intervention. Budapest race-winner Ahmed started in 13th place but battled his way to 11th place early on. He edged into the points after Ticktum served his penalty.
Prema’s Mick Schumacher and Ralf Aron exchanged places as they aimed to recover from 18th and 17th on the grid respectively. Aron, who won the first two races of the weekend, ran wide at Turn 1, which allowed Schumacher through. They finished 13th and 14th.
Championship leader Marcus Armstrong started 23rd after struggling with clutch issues in qualifying. He could only climb to 16th, behind Vips who ended up 15th after his near-stall at the start.
