F3 History

Nilsson made a great start from the second row and leapt straight into the lead, Ribeiro made a complete hash of his getaway with his car apparently in reverse, Ribeiro got away last and made it all the way to Sear where he hit the spun Ray of Stephen South. Ribeiro works March was written off and South got a heavy bang on the head that left him a little dazed. Also out on the first lap was Parsons when he tried to take the lead from Nilsson at Russell, he left the track and hit the bank.
Pierre Dieudonné moved his March up to second place followed by Sullivan, Patrick Neve and Ingo Hoffman. Sullivan soon lost places to Neve and Hoffman as his engine began to misfire in the wet conditions, and he fell further back as the Marches of Chris Barnett and Hervé Regout demoted him and then Tony Rouff’s Ehrlich and Ian Taylor’s GRD followed suit.
As the race moved on to lap 17 and the track began to dry out Dieudonné began to close up on Nilsson and Neve lost a place to Hoffman as his engine suffered from fuel injection bothers. Hoffman’s March was suffering from a battered nosecone but it didn’t seem to be hampering the Brazilian’s progress. Despite Dieudonné closing in Nilsson kept his nerve and held on to take the win by just over three seconds. Neve fell further back on lap 24 when Chris Barnett passed him after a steady drive and Regout nearly caught Neve on the line but the Belgian held onto fifth by 0.2 seconds.