Luke Browning held the lead of the F3 feature race at the Red Bull Ring to take victory and the championship lead with it.
The Williams junior driver led every lap despite having rivals within DRS range for the majority of the race. He beat Gabriele Mini to the chequered flag with Dino Beganovic in third.
Pole winner Browning successfully held the lead when the lights went out at the start, leading Lindblad with Gabriele Mini in third. Mini challenged for second around the outside of turn four but was rebuffed, which allowed Dino Beganovic to get by Mini into third before he passed his second Prema team mate into turn three on lap two to move up into second.
Browning became the head of a long DRS train covering the top 15 cars but kept ahead of Beganovic without allowing the Ferrari junior to get close enough to challenge him for the lead. There was a brief Virtual Safety Car period when Nikita Bedrin was hit by Mari Boya at turn three back in the pack, before Oliver Goethe and Noel Leon made contact out of turn four while battling for fifth, resulting in Leon sliding off track with a right-rear puncture.
Beganovic eventually began to put Browning under pressure with around ten laps remaining, but even with lap after lap of DRS could not get close enough to have a look for the lead. As the laps ticked down, Beganovic became under greater pressure from Mini behind than he was able to put Browning under.
By the penultimate lap, Browning had managed to escape out of DRS range of Beganovic behind. Mini passed his team mate around the outside of turn four to take second, but Beganovic fought back to reclaim the position on the final lap at turn three. However, Mini would ultimately prevail when he once again pulled off a move around the outside of turn four to retake second.
Browning completed the final lap to take the chequered flag by 1.6 seconds from Mini, with Beganovic taking the final podium position in third. Christian Mansell climbed up to fourth to join the battle for the podium but eventually finished four tenths away, with Goethe finishing in fifth ahead of Nikol Tsolov.
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Lindblad faded over the race to finish seventh with Laurens van Hoepen in eighth and former championship leader Leonardo Fornaroli in ninth. McLaren junior Alexander Dunne claimed the final points position in tenth, with Sophia Floersch just four tenths of a second away from scoring from her first point of the…
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