Calado sprays the champagne for the second time in GP2 - Photo Credit: Lorenzo Bellanca/GP2 Series Media Service
James Calado scored his second GP2 race win in just his second weekend in the category, as he won the sprint race in Malaysia. His Lotus GP teammate Esteban Gutierrez finished behind him in second, with Felipe Nasr completing the podium to cap a very impressive debut weekend.
Calado, who also won on his GP2 debut in the non-championship race in Abu Dhabi last November, began from pole on the reverse grid and maintained his lead from start to finish, crossing the finish line two seconds ahead of the more experienced Gutierrez.
Reigning British F3 champion Felipe Nasr ran the Lotus duo close for the entire race, finishing 1.4s behind Gutierrez for the DAMS team.
Caterham's Giedo van der Garde started ninth on the grid, but made a flying to start to move up to fourth, where he went on to finish.
Feature race winner Luiz Razia finished just behind the Dutchman, having cleared both Stefano Coletti and Fabio Leimer in the closing stages. Coletti destroyed his tyres trying to keep Razia behind, and dropped out of contention with a few laps to go.
Davide Valsecchi dived down the inside of Razia into turn 4 on lap 13, but ran wide and off the track. After rejoining the circuit he was clipped by Marcus Ericsson as he turned into turn 5, sending Valsecchi into a barrel roll and putting both out of the race.
Afterwards, Razia came under pressure from Max Chilton but the Brit repeated Valsecchi's feat by running wide after trying to get past the Brazilian. He fell behind Nathanael Berthon, but would get back ahead of the Frenchman by the finish as they finished seventh and eighth behind Razia and Leimer.
