In fact it was DeJong’s countryman Zac Campbell who took pole position for the first time this season in the sprint race, ahead of Rogers, while Jamie Fluke put in a season-best qualifying time to lead his compatriot Sebastian Job on row two. Fluke was soon facing the wrong way though. After losing out to Job in the first complex, Fluke slotted in behind the Red Bull driver but was tagged from behind by Dayne Warren and pitched into the outside barrier. Campbell couldn’t hold off Rogers for long, as the championship leader slotted past at the start of lap two. Defending champion Job followed suit at the end of the lap, but the front three were pulling clear of fourth – first Warren, then Alejandro Sanchez after a move at the hairpin – as a group. Job seemed to be biding his time for a final lap assault, but threw his chance away by taking too much kerb on the penultimate lap at the chicane. With what seemed like the lightest of grazes at the Wall of Champions, the Briton was on the back foot for the final lap defending from Campbell, allowing Rogers to take another win with a relatively comfortable gap. DeJong secured the vital eighth place finish to get his car on pole for the feature race and essentially never looked back – partly helped by a series of enormous crashes behind him.
The sprint race had been marred by a number of crashes at the hairpin, and it seemed that the drivers hadn’t learned any lessons. Incidents happened almost right at the start of the feature race, with some big names involved.
A chain reaction crash in turn two saw Maximilian Benecke tag Tommy Ostgaard into a spin, while Sindre Setsaas suffered the same fate courtesy of Diogo Pinto. In the melee, Ricardo Castro Ledo found himself airborne as several other cars hit him in quick succession.
Turn six saw Sanchez outbrake himself, allowing Job through on his left, but with Spaniard recovering alongside him Job had nowhere to go but into Warren’s passenger door, flipping the Australian out of contention.
More mayhem came at the hairpin on lap two. Sanchez again seemed to go too deep into the corner, with Job and team-mate Graham Carroll seizing the chance to pass. However Benecke found his path blocked by Red Bulls, and that backed him into an unsighted Rogers, who scooped him up into the air and onto his roof.
At the front, DeJong, Kevin Ellis, and Tuomas Tahtela were having a relatively quiet race, with Campbell in a very lonely fourth place, but there was more action to come from the battle for fifth. Rogers, despite dropping to 12th after that collision with Benecke, had fought back to eighth to join Job, Carroll, and Pinto in a four-way scrap. Unusually, it was Job who erred, going too deep into turn one and losing out to Carroll through turn two as a result. That brought Rogers up alongside, and the two unwisely duelled through the chicane, resulting in a paint exchange with the outside wall. That brought Pinto back into play, and the trio ran almost three wide for most of the lap – and actually three wide into the final chicane, with the two champions not heeding the reputation of the Wall of Champions. However it was Pinto that lost out on the brakes, allowing Job and Rogers to escape up the road. The 2019 and 2020 champions were just about inseparable for the rest of the race, but Rogers couldn’t make a move stick. DeJong’s win, ahead of Ellis and Tahtela, saw him pare Rogers’ championship lead by just two points over the round, while Ellis moves up to third overall ahead of Job.