Callum Voisin took his maiden Formula 3 victory in a Belgian feature race that was severely disrupted by three safety car periods.
The GB3 champion had secured his first podium last time out at Silverstone, when he'd crossed the line first in the feature race before a five-second penalty demoted him to third.
Voisin showed it was no flash in the pan by qualifying his Rodin Motorsport machine on pole, and looked composed throughout the race. He fended off an early challenge from Sebastian Montoya (Campos) before successfully negotiating the various restarts to win by 0.9s.
In total, only seven of the 15 laps were run under green flag conditions.
Meanwhile Prema clinched its fifth teams’ championship title with a round to spare, despite none of its drivers scoring a point in the feature race.
In drying conditions, pre-event championship leader Gabriele Mini’s day took a nosedive as the sprint race runner-up was spun at La Source on the opening lap by Oliver Goethe and dropped to the back of the field.
But the Alpine junior driver was gifted a way back into the race on lap three by the arrival of the safety car.
This was caused by Martinius Stenshorne (Hitech) and ART debutant Tuukka Taponen having separate incidents at Stavelot – with the Finn replacing Nikola Tsolov, who was banned for racing at Spa in another series – which contravened F3's sporting regulations.
Following the four-lap safety car period, the race was interrupted again one lap later after Joseph Loake (Rodin) tagged Sophia Floersch into a spin at Bruxelles, with the latter unable to recover from the gravel.
The final interruption came after less than one further lap of racing but carried significant championship implications.
Arvid Lindblad (Prema), who had arrived in Belgium as the second-placed driver but qualified in 27th and was on a recovery drive, tangled with Christian Mansell (ART) and came to rest in the same gravel trap as Floersch.
Having started on the front row, Leonardo Fornaroli had dropped behind Montoya at the start but remained in third, a position that elevated him to the top of the drivers’ standings by a single point from Mini.
After suffering a 10-second penalty for track limits and dropping out of the points in the sprint outing, Luke Browning was sixth in the feature race and will head to Monza six points off the lead in third.
As a result of his non-score, Lindblad trails by 16, with a maximum haul of 39 points remaining available.
