The champion of 2020 Job hasn’t made the best of starts this season, but proved the man to catch in sprint qualifying, as he beat Jamie Fluke by just under half a tenth.
Again, the sprint race was almost circumspect, as the front eight almost finished in the exact order they started, with only Ayhancan Guven’s overtake of Kevin Ellis Jr for sixth changing the line-up. Crucially that put Diogo Pinto on pole position for the reverse grid feature race, as he held off championship leader Jeremy Bouteloup for eighth in the sprint.
Pinto initially held firm, but a mistake into the Senna S on lap six saw Ellis – the feature race winner at Barcelona – take the lead. With Ellis now at the front, Pinto then lost position to Dayne Warren and Zac Campbell in quick succession, while Warren hit the front soon after. However, another error in the Senna S, this time from Warren, saw the lead change again, with Ellis hitting the front and dragging Campbell with him. Warren would later end up with a drive-through penalty to fall out of the points. With just the final lap to go, Campbell finally hit the front, passing Ellis into the Senna S. A robust defence saw him take his first series win, from Ellis, with Pinto rounding out the podium. Notably that’s a sixth different race winner in six races this season so far. The results also mean Pinto takes over from Bouteloup at the top of the table, and Guven has closed up to within three points of the Frenchman.