Bruno Del Pino took victory in the Formula 3 Sprint Race in Melbourne, besting Enzo Deligny and Brando Badoer in the race, which came to an early end.
In a disrupted Sprint Race, Del Pino came out in front, avoiding the chaos behind, to take his first F3 victory.
A strong start from Del Pino
With the top 12 from qualifying reversed for the Sprint Race, Bruno Del Pino was starting on pole with his teammate Enzo Deligny alongside him.
The VAR duo both looked to take the lead into the first corner. The lights went out, and Del Pino had a strong start, leading clearly into the first turn, when his teammate fell into the field going four wide in the opening corners.
Deligny held off Brando Badoer, who was fighting for second place, as further back in the order, the squabbling for positions raged on.
Mattia Colnaghi dropped down through the order after running through the gravel in his fight with James Wharton for seventh place. The Red Bull junior ended up last on Lap 3.
Nicola Lacorte and Ugo Ugochukwu fought side by side in lap 5, Ugochukwu moving around the outside of the DAMS driver. Ugochukwu moved into ninth place.
DRS was enabled on the second lap, but the system prevented any of the 30 drivers from using the feature. Instead, drivers relied on slipstreams.
In third, Badoer had Stromsted on his gearbox, the gap coming down to just 0.3s between the duo.
PREMA on PREMA
Wharton and Louis Sharp went side by side on lap 7, the PREMA duo fighting dangerously close. Sharp looked around the outside of Wharton, who gave Sharp a light push off track in retaliation.
However, both drivers looked to take the inside line into Turn 5; the PREMA drivers made contact, sending both cars into the barriers and picking up significant damage, taking them out of the race.
Initially, a Safety Car was brought out, but with the extensive damage to the barrier, it was quickly changed to a red flag.
For Del Pino, the red flag made his job harder, losing his comfortable lead. With a Safety Car restart, he would have to try again.
However, with only a limited amount of time to run and extensive barrier damage, Race Control decided the race would not resume. With just 25% of the race completed, only the top five would receive points.
Del Pino took victory with VAR teammate Deligney in second. Badoer and Stromsted took third and fourth, and Taito Kato took the final points playing position.
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