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Championship leader Stoffel Vandoorne keeps dominating the Feature races: the ART GP driver takes the victory in the GP2 Feature race in Austria, which marks his fifth consecutive Feature race win since Abu Dhabi in the previous season. Sergey Sirotkin finished in second place after showing speed all weekend long, and Alex Lynn drove to a strong third place finish.
Only 24 cars lined up on the grid as Sergio Canamasas and Zoel Amberg were not able to take part in the race. The first laps were eventful: As the lights went out, Vandoorne dashed away rapidly from pole position and held onto the lead through the first corner, quickly creating a gap. Sergey Sirotkin had a quick start as well from fourth on the grid, squeezing past Nobuharu Matsushita on the front row and chasing after Vandoorne while Pierre Gasly, who had started alongside the Russian, was pushed back after making contact with another car through Turn 2 and damaging his front wing. Another collision further down the field left Nathanael Berthon with a damaged car, and the Frenchman was forced to return the pits where he would eventually become the only retirement of the race.
A virtual safety car phase, caused by debris falling off Gasly’s damaged front wing, calmed the race down again in the second lap. At the restart Vandoorne got away quickly, pursued by Sirotkin and Matsushita, while Nick Yelloly, who had worked his way up into fourth place in the first laps, lost two positions. Fifth-placed Raffaele Marciello was also caught napping and dropped even further down the order.
Batles shaped up all over the top ten: Sirotkin in second place was attacked by Matsushita, while Gasly behind them came under pressure from Yelloly and was soon overtaken. With a tail of cars shaping up behing him, Gasly dropped down the order quickly. Alexander Rossi was also slicing his way up through the field from twelfth on the grid and successfully challenged Rio Haryanto and then the struggling Gasly as well.
The pit stop window opened on lap six and race leader Vandoorne was the first one to come in for a tyre change, with second-placed Sirotkin and third-placed Matsushita following suit one lap later. Sirotkin emerged from the pits ahead of Vandoorne, however, the Belgian got past his rivals on cold tyres easily.
The struggling Gasly, who had inherited the race lead, was soon overtaken by Alex Lynn and Artem Markelov. A battle for the lead among the drivers without pit stops shaped up between them and Lynn was unable to push to increase the gap to Vandoorne, while the Belgian himself cruised through the midfield two seconds ahead of the squabbling pair of Sirotkin and Matsushita. The trio caught up to the fighting Simon Trummer and Nigel de Jong. This delay gave Lynn at the front a bit of room: he was able to shake off Markelov soon afterwards and focused on creating a large enough gap for his late pit stop.
After Vandoorne had gotten back into clean air as well, he and Lynn set fastest lap after
fastest lap, both pushing hard until it was clear that Vandoorne on fresher tyres had the advantage. Lynn made his stop in lap 33, emerging from the pit lane in fifth place behind the battling Rossi and Matsushita. As Rossi had pushed hard in the early stage of the session he began to struggle with tyre degrataton and was soon overtaken by both Matsushita and Lynn. Having the edge on the fresher rubber, Lynn set his eyes on a podium finish and closed in rapidly on the Japanese, eventually overtaking him with DRS with two laps left to run.
However, it was once again Stoffel Vandoorne who crossed the finish line in first place, 11 seconds ahead of Sergey Sirotkin. Alex Lynn rounds out the podium ahead of Nobuharu Matsushita, Artem Markelov, Alexander Rossi, Rio Haryanto, Nick Yelloly, Arthur Pic, and Robert Visoiu.
