GP3: Albon holds off charging Leclerc for win

Alexander Albon became the first man to beat Charles Leclerc in a GP3 Series Saturday race by taking victory at Silverstone. The Anglo-Thai converted his pole position into a lights-to-flag win, while the sister ART Grand Prix machine of Leclerc was hauled through from a grid-penalized seventh to second.

Front-row man Sandy Stuvik managed to hold onto second place for almost eight laps, before Trident teammate Antonio Fuoco got past into Club, and then Leclerc and Jake Hughes also quickly passed the fading Stuvik.

Leclerc moved up on Fuoco, and pulled off a breathtaking move around the outside of Stowe on the 10th lap of 20 – Fuoco forced his fellow Ferrari junior as wide as he dared and there may have been slight wheel-to-wheel contact, before Leclerc benefited from the inside line into Club.

Leclerc was 4.3 seconds adrift of Albon by this stage and, although he reduced that to 2.8s within two laps, Albon managed to stabilize it. Another late charge from the Leclerc failed to make enough inroads, and Albon crossed the line 1.6s in front.

Hughes moved up to challenge Fuoco, but bad luck struck the DAMS driver when the upper plane of his rear wing worked loose. He was shown the black-and-orange flag requiring him to pit, but instead of rejoining he called it a day. That promoted Matt Parry to fourth, the Welshman battling his way through from outside the top 10 with a series of passing moves in his Koiranen GP car. By the end of the race he had a challenge from ART's Nyck de Vries, who had been delayed on his climb from the back of the grid when he collided with teammate Nirei Fukuzumi at Brooklands corner, but swiftly resumed his surge.

De Vries finished just behind Parry, and a five-second penalty for the McLaren junior for the clash with Fukuzumi made no difference to his final position.

Stuvik plummeted from sixth to ninth over the last couple of laps, with Ralph Boschung taking sixth from Artur Janosz (another to climb from the back of the grid) and Jake Dennis, who bravely passed Stuvik at Becketts for eighth – and provisional reversed-grid pole – on the final lap. But a time penalty for track-limits offenses put Dennis out of the points, moving Stuvik up to eighth and pole for Sunday.

Second-row starter Arjun Maini faded dramatically in the early laps on his GP3 debut, but settled down and made up places once more to claim ninth from Alex Palou.

Isaakyan was another shown the black-and-orange flag, in his case for a loose mirror, dropping him out of fifth place.

RESULTS - 20 LAPS:

Originally on Autosport.com