West Ewell’s Duncan Tappy netted another strong points haul at round nine of Superleague Formula by Sonangol at Portimao in Portugal to maintain Flamengo’s top six championship place.

Tappy spent most of Sunday’s opening 45-minute race yo-yoing up and down the midfield order on his way to eighth place.

Trapped down the inside pitwall at the start, he was powerless to maintain seventh and slipped three positions.

He was clearly quick though and picked off championship challengers Yelmer Buurman (AC Milan) and Max Wissel (FC Basel) in the opening laps, before a mistake in the final sector helped them both re-pass.

He then pitted at the first opportunity only for a slow stop to hand Neel Jani another place. But 10th was almost immediately recovered when the Olympaicos machine came in for a second time, which then became eighth late in the race when Buurman and Andy Soucek (Galatasaray) both received drive-through penalties.

Tappy made good progress at the crowded start of race two and exited the first corner eighth, up two positions from his reverse-grid 11th.

Moves on consecutive laps ensured he was up to sixth before the pit window opened after 15 minutes, only for a slow stop to drop him back to seventh behind Frederic Vervisch where he would remain to the finish.

“Things just didn’t really fall our way today,” he said. “On Friday I really thought we were going to have a mega weekend. I was fast, especially on old tyres, and thought we were sitting pretty. But then today the balance of the car has changed and we just couldn’t dial it out. We had two bad pitstops as well.”