Thanks to an unbelievable start and opening lap by championship leader Luca Ghiotto, the Italian managed to recover enough points to effectively save his title chances. Having had his 14 point point advantage cut to 10 after qualifying due to Esteban Ocon claiming pole position, and qualifying only in seventh place (but started sixth due to Matt Parry’s penalty) the title favourite had a lot to do.
By turn one, the Italian was already up into second place and was quickly on the tail of Ocon who had to concede the lead of the race to his title rival at turn 13 – a corner that has caused difficulties in all categories this weekend.
Similarly Emil Bernstorff who had started in seventh place had found himself in third place by Turn One, where he remained for the race, due to Matheo Tuscher (who started from second) and Kevin Ceccon (started from third) having difficult starts by bogging down and struggling to get away.
As a possible result of his difficult start Ceccon found himself being involved in a final corner incident with Aleksander Bosak, putting both cars at of the race and resulting in the safety car being called into action.
After two laps behind the safety car, racing restarted with Jann Mardenborough quickly taking action and passed his teammate Antonio Fuoco for P5. Out front Ghiotto was currently holding a slim margin of 0.6s over Ocon.
With laps ticking down, Ghiotto set about setting rapid laps to get out of the clutches of Ocon to extend his advantage to 1.3s – with Ocon actually running wide off track at one point in his effort to close the gap. Behind the pair, Campos Racing‘s Alex Palou was all over the back of Bernstorff in the hopes of snatching third place away from the Brit in the closing stages.
Mardenborough found himself reeling in Palou as the race drew to a close but just fell short. There was a fierce battle going on between the Koiranen GP teammates Parry and Jimmy Eriksson, with the Briton just edging out the Swede at the chequered but meant Eriksson had finished in the elusive eighth place.
Ghiotto crossed the line in first place followed by: Ocon, Bernstorff, Palou, Mardenborough, Fuoco, Parry, Marvin Kirchhöfer and Artur Janosz.