The Italian made a clean getaway at the start to comfortably hold off fellow front row starter Ye Yifei on the run down to Lisboa Bend. He then immediately pushed on with his advantage, opening up a 4.1-seconds advantage over Ye in the first three laps before the gap stabilized at around 2.5 seconds.

Fuoco reckoned that having fresh tyres had been critical in helping him in the opening laps. “I had a really good start and compared to the others, with new tyres, I was able to push a bit more at the beginning,” he said. “The guys were coming back after that, but I was able to keep the two seconds gap.”

Ferrari driver Ye eventually came home second but faced race-long pressure from behind. The Chinese driver had managed to stave off an attempt by BMW’s Raffaele Marciello to get past him around the outside into Lisboa Bend on the opening lap, but it was Porsche’s Alessio Picariello who was more of a threat to Ye throughout the 12-lap encounter.

Ye could not shake off Picariello’s attention, with the pair never more than one second apart as they fought it out throughout – eventually crossing the line 0.655 seconds apart.

Early on, Picariello’s main attention had been focused on protecting his position as Marciello launched an early challenge – but the pursuing BMW started dropping back at the halfway stage as his tyres went off. Marciello eventually came home four seconds adrift of the final podium spot. Joel Eriksson finished fifth in his Audi, with Porsche driver Ayhancan Güven taking sixth.