He may already have been crowned the 2015 Formula Renault 3.5 champion, but Oliver Rowland showed few signs of slowing down on Saturday as he claimed a record-breaking eighth win of the season at Jerez.
Rowland followed in the footsteps of Carlos Sainz Jr, Kevin Magnussen and Mikhail Aleshin by winning the World Series by Renault’s flagship series last time out at Le Mans, easing the pressure for the final round of the season.
Pole position went to Tom Dillmann, and the Frenchman led the first half of the race from Rowland and Egor Orudzhev before a puncture caused him to drop down the order.
Having inherited the lead, Rowland duly controlled proceedings at the front of the pack for the remaining 13 laps before crossing the line to claim his eighth win of the year.
The result sees Rowland break Sainz’s existing record of seven wins in a single season from 2014, and extends his championship lead over Matthieu Vaxiviere to 70 points after the Frenchman finished third on track.
“Qualifying was tricky with two red flags that really came at the wrong time and a trip to the pits with a minor problem,” Rowland said. “The performance was there and I knew that if the rain stopped, the tires would suffer.
“We were conservative with the set-ups so that we could be strong late in the race and on lap two, I saw that Tom Dillmann’s tires were already suffering from graining. I have won at every meeting this year, except Monaco. I really hope to finally score the double tomorrow!”
McLaren youngster Nyck de Vries finished fourth ahead of Tio Ellinas and Jazeman Jaafar, while Nicholas Latifi ended the race in seventh. Andre Negrao, Roy Nissany and Yu Kanamaru rounded out the points in positions eight-to-ten respectively.