Barcelona GP3: Albon holds off Tunjo for maiden win

Like his ART teammate Charles Leclerc in Saturday’s season opener, Albon made the perfect getaway from third on the grid to grab the advantage from reverse grid polesitter Tunjo approaching Turn 1.

The pair ran side-by-side as they reached the braking zone, with Albon going to the outside of Tunjo and braking fractionally later to move ahead.

Both quickly escaped from the rest of the pack, Tunjo keeping Albon under pressure for the rest of the race but never drawing close enough to attempt an overtake.

Albon crossed the line 1.2s clear of the Jenzer driver to take the first win of his career since 2014 in Formula Renault 2.0 NEC.

Some six seconds behind Tunjo, Antonio Fuoco completed the podium after getting the better of front-row starter Jake Dennis at the start, but failing to keep pace with the two leaders.

The rest of the points scoring drivers finished in the order they ended the first lap, with Nyck de Vries moving up to fifth at the start ahead of Matevos Isaakyan, Kevin Jorg and Jake Hughes.

After being shuffled back to 10th on the opening lap, race one winner Leclerc managed to grab a place back at Ralph Boschung’s expense, but spent the rest of the race boxed in behind the DAMS cars of Jorg and Hughes.

There was action just outside the top 10 early on as Matt Parry forced Santino Ferrucci off the track along the start/finish straight, the Briton earning himself a 10-second time penalty and dropping from 12th to 20th as a result.

Race results:

Pos.	Driver	Team	Time/Gap
1	Alexander Albon	ART Grand Prix	28:24.177
2	Oscar Tunjo	Jenzer Motorsport	1.294
3	Antonio Fuoco	Trident	7.307
4	Jake Dennis	Arden International	8.114
5	Nyck de Vries	ART Grand Prix	11.612
6	Matevos Isaakyan	Koiranen GP	12.505
7	Kevin Jorg	DAMS	15.012
8	Jake Hughes	DAMS	15.670
9	Charles Leclerc	ART Grand Prix	16.695
10	Ralph Boschung	Koiranen GP	18.345
11	Santino Ferrucci	DAMS	18.757
12	Artur Janosz	Trident	20.796
13	Nirei Fukuzumi	ART Grand Prix	21.450
14	Alex Palou	Campos Racing	21.934
15	Sandy Stuvik	Trident	24.818
16	Giuliano Alesi	Trident	26.107
17	Richard Gonda	Jenzer Motorsport	27.024
18	Tatiana Calderon	Arden International	27.582
19	Jack Aitken	Arden International	29.135
20	Matt Parry	Koiranen GP	29.524
21	Konstantin Tereshchenko	Campos Racing	30.109
22	Steijn Schothorst	Campos Racing	30.840
23	Akash Nandy	Jenzer Motorsport	33.959
24	Mahaveer Raghunathan	Koiranen GP	43.431