After his first pole position, Antonio Giovinazzi has also claimed a hard-fought maiden GP2 race win for himself and GP2 debutants PREMA Racing in an exciting Feature race that was dominated by battles, accidents, and the safety car. Sergey Sirotkin (ART GP) scored his first podium of the season, snatching second place from Raffaele Marciello (RUSSIAN TIME) in the very last moment.
When the lights went out, at first it seemed like Giovinazzi would not be able to celebrate: The Italian had a very slow start and dropped down to fifth place. Sergey Sirotkin, starting from third place behind Giovinazzi, was held up and pushed down to seventh. His team mate Nobuharu Matsushita on the other hand profited from the Italian’s and dashed forward to claim the lead, having to defend from Marciello who had started from the second row behind the Japanese.
However, the race did not last long: All hell broke loose as the pack passed the first corner, and when the debris and dust clouds cleared, the cars of Alex Lynn and Nicholas Latifi (both DAMS), Sergio Canamasas and Marvin Kirchhöfer (both Carlin), Pierre Gasly (PREMA Racing) and Norman Nato (Racing Engineering) were stranded on the track. The safety car had to come out while the track was cleared, and championship leader Nato was the only one able to continue the race with front wing.
After the restart, Marciello and Matsushita exchanged the lead between the two of them until Marciello eventually emerged victorious, and Giovinazzi pushed hard as well and passed the fourth-placed MP Motorsport car of Oliver Rowland. Battles raged up all over the top ten until the race was interrupted again by the safety car in lap 7: Philo Paz Armand had hit the barriers and his Trident car had to be removed from the track.
Most of the drivers dashed into the pits to change from their supersoft tyres to the medium compound, only Nabil Jeffri (Arden International) stayed out as he had started on the harder Pirelli rubber and found himself running in third place when the others had completed their stops.
When the safety car came in again in lap 10, Jeffri tried to attack Matsushita for second place; however, the squabbling pair got into trouble and fell victim to both Rowland and Giovinazzi. Jeffri began to tumble down the order soon afterwards, and the race continued in a calmer manner as drivers began to save their tyres for the final stage of the race. Marciello pulled away from the front, leading from Rowland and Giovinazzi, Luca Ghiotto (Trident), the ART GP duo, and Mitch Evans (Campos Racing) who had worked his way up from 15th place at the start.
In lap 14, Giovinazzi used DRS to take second place from Rowland and went on to pursue Marciello. Behind the leading group, Matsushita tried and failed to get past Ghiotto, losing a position to his team mate in the process. It was then Sirotkin’s turn to attack, and eventually both ART cars passed the Trident driver.
Giovinazzi managed to sneak up to Marciello and was able to take the race lead from his countryman in lap 18. Maricello was ready for a fight; however, the race was once again interrupted by the safety car: At the bottom of the field, the Racing Engineering team mates had come together and the car of championship leader Nato was too damaged to continue and had to be recovered by the marshals.
When the race was restarted, there were only three laps left to run, and all bets were off: Giovinazzi had a massive lock-up during and Marciello tried to wrestle past his struggling countryman, but Giovinazzi remained just barely in the lead. Sirotkin and Rowland fought wheel to wheel for third place, and it was the Russian who emerged as the winner of the battle. A fight at the bottom of the field between King and Arden International’s Jimmy Eriksson left both drivers unable to finish the race, and the yellow flags waved claimed down the proceedings during the last lap. Giovinazzi saw the checkered flag as the deserved winner, while Sergey Sirotkin, fighting teeth and claws to get past Marciello, overtook the Italian right before crossing the finish line. Rowland finished the chaotic race in fourth place ahead of Evans, Matsushita, and Sean Gelael (Campos Racing). Revers grid pole honours went to Daniel de Jong (MP Motorsport), who crossed the finish line in eighth place ahead of Ghiotto and Rapax’s Gustav Malja, the last driver to finish the full race distance.
