Russell retained the lead but struggled to extend his lead despite the compound advantage.
From this point on, the Williams man had to hold Albon at bay and retain the tyre life to make it to the end, a stint of 22 laps on a demanding circuit for rear tyres especially.
The gap out front had hovered around 5sec following the stops but Albon gradually began to eat into the lead.
F1 Virtual GP debutants Pierre Gasly and Sergio Perez struggled for pace versus the experienced drivers, their lack of playing time telling during the middle phase of the race as they both fell away from cars in front outside of the top 10.
With the top five spread out on track, it became a question of whether Russell’s medium tyres would survive the remainder of the race with Albon pushing hard.
The gap hovered around 4.5sec with five laps to go but a three-second time penalty for the Red Bull man due to corner cutting all but sealed Russell’s victory.
From that point on, Russell kept it calm and as he did in Monaco, dominated the race to win ahead of his F1 rivals.
Gasly ended his first online race in 12th, a number of penalties for Perez left him 15th and Leclerc struggled to a 14th place finish.