Photo: Fotospeedy
Indian driver Ameya Vaidyanathan took his first ever racing victory after slipstreaming past Euroformula Open points?leader Harrison Scott early in race one at Spa-Francorchamps.
Pole-sitter Scott, who signed a deal to drive for RP Motorsport the whole season following his double at Estoril last month, initially led but could not pull away from Carlin?s Vaidyanathan in the opening laps.
On lap three, Vaidyanathan picked up Scott?s slipstream down the Kemmel straight and swept past into the lead.
For the rest of the race he was unrivalled, immediately putting a second between himself and Scott and then stretching that advantage out to two-and-a-half seconds over the rest of the 13 lap race.
Scott fell into the clutches of Devlin DeFrancesco and Nikita Troitskiy as the race progressed, but did well to avoid being slipstreamed for much of the distance.
On the last lap DeFrancesco got close, coming alongside down the Kemmel straight but unable to work the outside line at Les Combes into a move, and trailed Scott for his first podium of the season and rookie class victory.
Troitskiy finished fourth, ahead of Thiago Vivacqua (who had briefly joined the hunt of Scott) and Tarun Reddy.
Simo Laaksonen was a distant seventh in front of Alex Karkosik, Petru Florescu and Eliseo Martinez.
Race 1 Results (13 laps)
1 Ameya Vaidyanathan Carlin 29m37.874s
2 Harrison Scott RP Motorsport +2.479s
3 Devlin DeFrancesco Carlin +2.824s
4 Nikita Troitskiy Drivex +3.480s?
5 Thiago Vivacqua Campos +4.207s
6 Tarun Reddy Carlin +7.094s?
7 Simo Laaksonen Campos +18.879s?
8 Alex Karkosik RP Motorsport +19.903s?
9 Petru Florescu Campos +20.566s
10 Eliseo Martinez Merono Teo Martin +20.628s
11 Pedro Cardoso Teo Martin +22.180s
12 Jannes Fittje Fortec +22.543s?
13 Daniil Pronenko BVM Racing +31.040s
14 Christian Hahn Drivex +33.560s
15 Alexey Chuklin Fortec +1m47.720s
16 Lodovico Laurini RP Motorsport +1 lap
Ret Matheus Iorio Campos
Fastest Lap: Vaidyanathan, 2m15.702s
Championship Standings
1 Scott 71 ??2 Vaidyanathan 46 ??3 Troitskiy 31 ??4 DeFrancesco 25 ??5 Vivacqua 25 ??6 Fittje 24 ??7 Iorio 17 ??8 Florescu 16 ??9 Laaksonen 14 ??10 Reddy 12