Paul Ricard F3: Daruvala wins as Hughes hits Armstrong

Daruvala was passed by Pedro Piquet and was running third at the start, but the Indian driver reclaimed his starting position in just two laps.

The gap between him and Hughes stagnated around 1.5s for several laps before Daruvala suddenly started to rapidly close in and pulled off a move in two laps.

Hughes was soon also passed by Armstrong, but he was able to fight back, only to then make a mistake and lose three positions.

The Briton was again able to fight back and tried to make a double move on Shwartzman and Armstrong to retake second, but he ended up hitting the latter and retired.

Shwartzman, avoiding the collision, held on to second and he completed the race in that position, closing the gap to Daruvala from 5.8s to 2.8s.

Piquet and Juri Vips were close behind Shwartzman in the late stages but they couldn't line up an overtake, with the Brazilian settling for third.

Vips had a five-second penalty given which was later cancelled by the stewards, but the Estonian's fourth-place finish wouldn't have been affected either way, as he finished 15.6s ahead of Bent Viscaal.

Viscaal stole fifth from Armstrong on the last lap, the New Zealander managing to finish the race with his damaged Prema-run car.

Yuki Tsunoda and Alex Peroni came out on top in a hectic late-race fight, which saw Devlin DeFrancesco retiring with a puncture, for the reverse-grid front row in seventh and eighth.

Tsunoda's fellow Red Bull junior Liam Lawson (MP Motorsport) was ninth, while a time penalty for ART's David Beckmann demoted him to 10th place.

Ten of the 29 drivers failed to finish the race with Keyvan Andres stalling, Christian Lundgaard retiring on the opening lap and Leonardo Pulcini hitting Teppei Natori.

Simo Laaksonen, Sebastian Fernandez, Max Fewtrell and Lirim Zendeli also failed to finish.

Cla	Driver	Team	Laps	Time
1	Jehan Daruvala	Prema Powerteam	20	38'27.360
2	Robert Shwartzman	Prema Powerteam	20	38'30.165
3	Pedro Piquet	Trident	20	38'30.573
4	Jüri Vips	HitechGP	20	38'31.066
5	Bent Viscaal	HWA AG	20	38'46.668
6	Marcus Armstrong	Prema Powerteam	20	38'48.506
7	Yuki Tsunoda	Jenzer Motorsport	20	38'52.330
8	Alex Peroni	Campos Racing	20	38'53.167
9	Liam Lawson	MP Motorsport	20	38'54.340
10	David Beckmann	ART Grand Prix	20	38'57.483
11	Andreas Estner	Jenzer Motorsport	20	38'58.177
12	Logan Sargeant	Carlin	20	38'59.632
13	Ye Yifei	HitechGP	20	39'00.700
14	Richard Verschoor	MP Motorsport	20	39'04.080
15	Fabio Scherer	Charouz Racing System	20	39'07.591
16	Alessio Deledda	Campos Racing	20	39'28.970
17	Raoul Hyman	Charouz Racing System	20	39'29.239
18	Niko Kari	Trident	20	39'36.166
19	Felipe Drugovich	Carlin	20	40'02.912
20	Simo Laaksonen	MP Motorsport	19	36'55.778
21	Devlin DeFrancesco	Trident	18	34'57.859
	Sebastian Fernandez	Campos Racing	15	29'10.156
	Jake Hughes	HWA AG	15	28'55.182
	Max Fewtrell	ART Grand Prix	10	19'50.336
	Lirim Zendeli	Charouz Racing System	9	17'47.814
	Teppei Natori	Carlin	1	2'08.282
	Leonardo Pulcini	HitechGP	1	2'08.465
	Keyvan Andres	HWA AG
	Christian Lundgaard	ART Grand Prix
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