Marcos Martinez took his fourth win of the season at Silverstone on Saturday in the Formula Renault 3.5 Series and as a result he stretched his lead in the overall standings.

Martinez started on the front row for the sprint race, alongside Bertrand Baguette, who was on pole, thanks to the reserve grid rule.

The Spaniard made a good start and led into turn one ahead of Baguette, Daniil Move and Fairuz Fauzy. The lead group then stayed compact behind Martinez, with Baguette having to stave off attacks from Move, who was himself under pressure from Fauzy.

Just behind them, Oliver Turvey was battling it out with James Walker, Brendon Hartley, Jaime Alguersuari and Charles Pic.

The situation shifted when Move went onto the grass and the Russian driver dropped back to eighth. Fairuz Fauzy thus inherited third, with Turvey and Walker both breathing down his throat.

The battle for tenth was just as contested, with dog-fighting between Spanish drivers Marco Barba, Adrian Valles and Miguel Molina. Molina overtook Valles on lap 6 and then moved up to attack Barba, before getting the upper hand and grabbing tenth. P10 soon became P9 too as Move had to stop in the pits to clear out his side pods.

Meanwhile, at the halfway point, Martinez now had a slender one second lead and behind him the fight between Baguette and Fauzy was raging hard.

Fauzy moved up level with Baguette on lap 19, when the Belgian driver braked as late as he could but couldn't stay on the tarmac. He came out sixth, just ahead of Alguersuari, who promptly got past him as well.

With ten minutes to go, Martinez remained in command ahead of Fauzy, Turvey, Walker, Hartley, Alguersuari, Baguette, Pic and Molina.

However, at the end of the race Martinez began to struggle and was regularly locking up under braking. That allowed Fauzy to close in, but the Spaniard held on to take the chequered flag 1.227 seconds ahead.