A second Silverstone victory for Luciano Bacheta on Sunday meant the 21-year-old emerged from Formula Two’s opening weekend with the clear early lead in the championship.
Romania’s Mihai Marinescu drove flawlessly to lead most of the race, but the Essex driver stayed with him as the rest of the field fell back, and with a lap to go he made his move going into Brooklands.
With his nose finally in front, Bacheta ensured his rival was unable to use his overboost to retake the lead on the last circuit and wrapped up a maximum 50 points from the weekend.
He said: “The experience from yesterday definitely helped. I was just biding my time. I pushed a lot harder in the beginning than I wanted, to just to stay within a second of Mihai all the time. He was so quick – he didn’t put a tyre wrong and it was tough to keep up.
“I kept chipping away then the gap levelled. I was saving the boost for the final stages and used it on the last but one lap at Brooklands. Mihai was looking in the mirror knowing I had the boost. We still need to work a little bit on our qualifying pace but I’m happy with our race pace and I couldn’t have asked for a better two results.”
Marinescu said: “I was really constant through the race, from the first lap to the last one, because Bacheta was always there, always behind me with a really constant gap. The difference made was one tenth which ruined my race. I’m disappointed with the result, I was leading until the last two laps, but I know what to do in the next race.”
Further back, Alex Fontana repeated his achievement from Saturday with a third-place finish and is now tied for second place in the championship with Marinescu. He said: “The front two were too fast for me so I focused on the tyres.”
Britain’s Daniel McKenzie improved a place on his Saturday performance to take fourth while Dino Zamparelli was sixth and Hector Hurst 10th.