ART Grand Prix’s Alex Albon has become the first GP3 driver this season to win four races after winning the feature race at the Sepang International Circuit.
The British-Thai driver claimed the lead on the first lap and never looked back, leading every lap of the 19-lap race.
Albon’s teammate Charles Leclerc started from pole position for the third consecutive feature race, however, after starting alongside him on the front row, he got a much better start than the Monegasque driver. He took the lead straight off the line and had passed Leclerc halfway down the start-finish straight.
Drama quickly struck in the race as two ART cars collided for the second race in succession with the second and third place runners involved in an incident.
Nyck de Vries, who had been near to the polesitter at the start of the race, collided with the rear of Leclerc. Leclerc was almost side-by-side with Albon on the outside and putting himself in his rival’s wing mirrors, when suddenly de Vries seemingly hit both drivers in a similar moment of time.
Leclerc remained in the top four after sustaining no damage and being able to drive straight away from the scene of the accident. His teammate, however, was as far down as 18th at one stage before starting to make a slight resurgence up the order.
The incident between the two quickly came under investigation by the stewards and the Dutch driver was given a five-second time penalty for causing a collision.
After this moment of chaos, Arden International’s Jack Aitken moved up to second with Jenzer Motorsport’s Arjun Maini finding himself in third before Leclerc got past the Indian driver to recover and move back onto the podium.
Campos Racing’s Steijn Schothorst, Arden’s Jake Dennis, ART Grand Prix’s Nirei Fukuzumi, Trident’s Antonio Fuoco, Koiranen GP’s Matt Parry and Trident’s Sandy Stuvik completed the top ten after the first four laps.
For much of the race, the order in the top ten would remain the same despite many drivers attempting to make daring overtakes.
Dennis closed on Schothorst in the battle for fifth place on lap ten. The British driver tried to get past at the final corner but locked up his left front tyre and couldn’t develop an overtake. Schothorst could just switch from the outside to the inside to get past. He then tried around the outside at turn one but the Dutch driver defended well.
The British driver would remain within around half a second behind the Campos car for the next few laps.
By lap nine, Albon led Aitken by 1.3s, with Leclerc a further 1.6 seconds behind the Arden driver.
Meanwhile, Leclerc made up over 0.9s between laps nine and 11 to cut the gap to Aitken to just 0.4s. Aitken had now fallen into the clutches of Leclerc and had fallen 2.7s behind Albon.
Albon’s lead would extend to 3.9s with three laps to go, however, Aitken extended the gap between second and third to around 0.9s. Leclerc had a good run at the final turn at the end of lap 17, but he couldn’t get past at turn one on lap 18.
With these two drivers fighting, Maini, who had set the fastest lap on lap 16 and began showing very competitive pace, started to catch the two drivers in front of him.
Albon stole the fastest lap of the race on lap 18 and came over the line to reach the chequered flag with an advantage of 6.3s. Aitken managed to hold on for his third second-place finish in the last six races. Leclerc’s finishing position of third narrowed the damage to his championship lead.
Maini finished fourth ahead of Schothorst and Dennis. Fukuzumi finished seventh ahead of Fuoco, de Vries and Parry. However, de Vries’ penalty removed him from the top ten of the classification, promoting Parry and Trident’s Sandy Stuvik into the final two points-scoring positions.
Jenzer’s Alessio Lorandi was promoted to 11th on his debut in the series, ahead of DAMS’ Kevin Joerg. The penalty took de Vries down to 13th in the final result ahead of Campos’ Alex Palou, Koiranen GP’s Matevos Isaakyan, Trident’s Giuliano Alesi and Campos’ Konstantin Tereschenko.
There were five retirements from the race. DAMS’ Santino Ferrucci pitted on the tenth lap with a suspected technical issue and it looked as if his race had come to an end, however, he came back onto the track around four laps later. The American returned to the pit lane on lap 15 to properly retire.
Akash Nandy retired from his home feature race after only a few laps. Trident’s Artur Janosz and DAMS’ Jake Hughes were under investigation by the stewards after the two were involved in an incident on the first lap and had been forced to retire. Arden’s Tatiana Calderon was the first retirement from the race.
Leclerc’s championship lead has reduced to just 24 points with three races to go following Albon’s win and fastest lap. The Monegasque driver moves onto a total of 196 points with Albon going into second place in the championship on 172 points following a so-so start to the weekend for championship rival Fuoco, who only claimed four points, and is 15 points behind Albon.
In the standings of the Teams’ Championship, ART move onto a record-breaking total of 517 points, the most points ever scored by one team in a season of the GP3 Series. This usurps their previous record of 477 points from every race in 2015.
Arden remain in second in the championship, moving onto 213 points, and extending their gap to rivals Trident to 43 points.
