Marko Asmer secured history on the streets of Bucharest after becoming the first person to win a race in the Romanian capital with victory in the fifth round of the British F3 International Series.
In a race dominated by Safety Car periods, Asmer secured his fourth win in a row to strengthen his lead at the top of the championship standings, while Carlin duo Alberto Valerio and Sam Bird completed the podium – the latter in his first outing on a street circuit. In the National Class, Michael Meadows celebrated his first start with Raikkonen Robertson Racing with a second win of the year, with Sergio Perez second and Hamad Al Fardan third, the Bahraini driver taking to the podium for the first time.
With conditions on track being tricky following the morning sessions, the decision was taken to start the race behind the Safety Car, with the race going green at the start of the second lap. At that point, Asmer started to pull out a lead from Valerio who soon coming under pressure from behind from Sebastien Hohenthal and team-mate Bird. Further back in the field, Ali Jackson was unable to build on his first National Class pole as he tangled with Jonathan Kennard and was forced to retire.
By the end of lap four, Asmer had shown his pace as he opened up a lead of 2.8secs over the battle for second, but two laps later, Hohenthal would be removed from that battle as the Swede was forced to retire.
The Fortec driver was defending third from Bird going into the penultimate corner when he locked up and got his car sideways – only to be collected from behind by team-mate Greg Mansell and the Ultimate Mygale of Michael Devaney. Although the Irish driver was able to continue, both Hohenthal and Mansell were out on the spot – with the Safety Car deployed to allow the cars to be recovered.
