Frijns survives attack from Sorensen and two late restarts to win first Formula Renault 3.5 race at Moscow Raceway

The Fortec Motorsports driver, who started on pole position, led the early stages of the race comfortably. But after a massive slide at half distance his pace started to drop off, allowing Sorensen to reel him in and fight for the lead.

Sorensen then attacked on the outside into the final, 90-degree left hander, but he spun as he tried to turn into the corner, creating a cloud of smoke and dropping to fifth behind Jules Bianchi, Sam Bird and Arthur Pic.

Bianchi used the incident to take two seconds out of his deficit to Frijns, but the Dutchman appeared to have enough pace to hold onto his lead of four seconds with Sorensen out of the equation.

However, he then had to deal with two restarts as the safety car appeared twice in close succession, both times to allow stranded cars to be recovered.

Frijns handled both restarts well, and held on for the single racing lap after the second safety car to take the win and the championship lead.

Despite a poor final restart Bianchi held on for second, while Bird surrendered the points lead with third.

Kevin Korjus used the one-lap shootout to steal fifth from Sorensen, while behind them all hell broke loose at the final corner when Lucas Foresti clattered into Kevin Magnussen and Alexander Rossi as they battled for eighth, eliminating all three in sight of the flag. Foresti received a five-place grid demotion for Sunday's race as a punishment.

Results - 30 Laps:

Pos  Driver                  Team          Time/Gap
 1.  Robin Frijns            Fortec      48m11.904s
 2.  Jules Bianchi           Tech 1        + 1.202s
 3.  Sam Bird                ISR           + 1.914s
 4.  Arthur Pic              DAMS          + 2.986s
 5.  Kevin Korjus            Tech 1        + 5.382s
 6.  Marco Sorensen          Lotus         + 5.610s
 7.  Antonio Felix da Costa  Arden         + 5.967s
 8.  Nico Muller             Draco         + 8.272s
 9.  Daniil Move             P1            + 9.431s
10.  Will Stevens            Carlin        + 9.789s
11.  Vittorio Ghirelli       Comtec       + 10.451s
12.  Nick Yelloly            Comtec       + 11.065s
13.  Andre Negrao            Draco        + 11.675s
14.  Mikhail Aleshin         RFR          + 12.795s
15.  Zoel Amberg             Pons         + 14.409s
16.  Kevin Magnussen         Carlin         + 1 lap
17.  Alexander Rossi         Arden          + 1 lap
18.  Lucas Foresti           DAMS           + 1 lap
19.  Yann Cunha              Pons           + 1 lap
20.  Sergey Sirotkin         BVM Target     + 1 lap

Retirements:

     Anton Nebylitskiy       RFR            24 laps
     Carlos Huertas          Fortec         20 laps
     Walter Grubmuller       P1             20 laps
     Nikolay Martsenko       BVM Target     17 laps
     Jake Rosenzweig         ISR             6 laps
     Cesar Ramos             Lotus           0 laps