Van Amersfoort Racing rookie Frederik Vesti took victory in the reversed-grid final ADAC Formula 4 race at Oschersleben.
Vesti started the race from second on the grid alongside Michael Waldherr, but ran side-by-side for the lead through the first two corners and grabbed the initiative on the inside of Turn 3.
He built a lead of over three seconds before a safety car wiped that out with 13 of the 27 minutes remaining after Tom Beckhauser ran into the back of Richard Wagner at the rear of the field.
Danish driver Vesti coped fine with the restart however, and re-established a margin of 2.8 seconds over the final eight minutes of racing.
Waldherr managed to hold onto second despite pressure from Juri Vips, who regained the championship lead with third place.
Vips gained third when Sophia Florsch suddenly slowed ahead of him through the fast sweepers near the end of the lap on lap three.
Further behind, Fabio Scherer did well not to hit the rear of Florsch’s car, and Felipe Drugovich had to take to the gravel in avoidance.
This caused the Brazilian, who took the points lead from Vips when he won race two, to be passed by Lirim Zendeli, Marcus Armstrong and Jonathan Aberdein, and fall to ninth.
Having been unable to get past Waldherr, Vips had to defend late on from Kim-Luis Schramm.
After twice swapping places with Zendeli, Armstrong finished sixth behind Scherer.
Following the safety car, Kami Laliberte passed his VAR team-mate Drugovich on the outside line into the fast Turn 1 in use this weekend, and a couple of laps later he put the same move on Aberdein to finish eighth.
Aberdein had an embarrassing moment prior to the start when he looped his Motopark car around while warming his tyres on the approach to the grid.
Although all cars started on slick tyres, a wet race had been declared and an extra formation lap scheduled – but some drivers didn’t seem to get this message, with Waldherr initially pulling up on pole position after only one lap.
It was just behind this that Aberdein went around, but the extra formation lap allowed him to move back up to his original grid position.