Chrome Dev Tools: How to trace network for a link that opens a new tab?

Check out chrome://net-internals/#events (or chrome://net-export in the latest version of Chrome) for a detailed overview of all network events happening in your browser.

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Other possible solution, depending on your specific problem, may be to enable ‘Preserve log’ on the ‘Network’ tab:

and force all links to open in the same tab by executing the following code in the console:

[].forEach.call(document.querySelectorAll('a'),
    function(link){
        if(link.attributes.target) {
            link.attributes.target.value="_self";
        }
    });

window.open = function(url) {
    location.href = url;
};