Valtteri Bottas sustained race-long pressure from Michael Christensen to take a lights-to-flag victory in the first GP3 race of the weekend at the Hungaroring.
Polesitter Bottas had eased away in the early laps, but he appeared to have no response as Christensen hunted him down by a couple of tenths of a second per lap later on. But as soon as the RSC Mucke driver got the gap down to less than a second, Bottas responded by becoming the fastest man on track to keep his lead at a safe margin and take his second successive victory for the ART Grand Prix team.
Christensen had jumped from fifth to second with a very bold move around the outside of James Calado (ART) and Mitch Evans (MW Arden) at Turn 1 after he had beaten Aaro Vainio (Tech 1) away from the line. Calado then went too deep into Turn 2 as he tried to fight back, and as he went to re-take the racing line he collided with Evans, who had tried to sneak through in the gap left by the Briton. Their clash led to Evans retiring, while Calado dropped way out of contention. It handed third place to Adrian Quaife-Hobbs, and the Manor driver would hold on to it until the finish.
Championship leader Alexander Sims came home fourth, the Status driver having made his way through the messy first couple of corners from 11th on the grid to hold onto his position at the top of the standings. He came under pressure from Nico Muller in the middle of the race, but there was nothing the Jenzer driver could do to force a way through.
Vainio followed that scrap home to take sixth, just ahead of Lewis Williamson (MW Arden), who made his way into the points from 15th on the grid with an excellent first lap of his own.
The final point went to Addax driver Tom Dillmann, who had to fight very hard in the closing laps to prevent Nigel Melker (RSC Mucke) grabbing the place and pole position for race two.