Romain Grosjean scored his second win of the GP2 Series season in the feature race at Valencia. The Frenchman benefited from a drive-through penalty handed to Giedo van der Garde, who had led from the start.
Van der Garde's Addax teammate Charles Pic was supposed to start the race from pole position, but his car stopped on the way to the grid.
Van der Garde led Grosjean and the chasing pack away from the start, but behind two drivers continued their frustrating starts to the season. Jules Bianchi and Marcus Ericsson came together at the sweeping Turn 1 and both ended up in the tyre wall on the left-hand-side on the run down to Turn 2, bringing out the safety car.
Alvaro Parente first race with Carlin in GP2 got off to a bad start as he spun out of Turn 2, into the path of Fabio Leimer, damaging the front end of both cars.
After the restart van der Garde put in a series of fastest laps to open up a decent lead over Grosjean, which he kept through the pitstops.
However, the Dutchman was then handed a drive-through penalty for ignoring yellow flags, which dropped him to fourth place once he had served it. Van der Garde climbed up to second in the closing stages past both Dani Clos and Davide Valsecchi, but Grosjean had enough of a margin to win the race by 15 seconds.
Behind the leading quartet Sam Bird came home in fifth just ahead of Luiz Razia. Esteban Gutierrez recovered from a mistake early on to finish seventh, with Josef Kral picking up the final point and sprint race pole at the scene of his back-breaking accident 12 months ago.
Luca Filippi had been fighting with Clos for third place earlier in the race before the pair tangled sending the Italian into retirement. Max Chilton ran fifth behind Clos and ahead of Bird after the pitstops but he would drop back and eventually retire.
Pos | Driver | Team | Time/Gap |
1. | Romain Grosjean | Dams | 58:19.400 |
2. | Giedo van der Garde | Barwa Addax Team | +15.481 |
3. | Davide Valsecchi | Caterham Team AirAsia | +20.901 |
4. | Dani Clos | Racing Engineering | +24.010 |
5. | Sam Bird | iSport International | +24.323 |
6. | Luiz Razia | Caterham Team AirAsia | +24.495 |
7. | Esteban Gutierrez | Lotus ART | +48.097 |
8. | Josef Kral | Arden International | +51.064 |
9. | Jolyon Palmer | Arden International | +53.632 |
10. | Michael Herck | Scuderia Coloni | +57.032 |
11. | Julian Leal | Rapax | +58.041 |
12. | Kevin Mirocha | Ocean Racing Technology | +58.567 |
13. | Pal Varhaug | Dams | +1:06.416 |
14. | Johnny Cecotto | Ocean Racing Technology | +1:12.085 |
15. | Rodolfo Gonzalez | Trident Racing | +1:20.090 |
16. | Fairuz Fauzy | Super Nova Racing | +1:25.296 |
17. | Stefano Coletti | Trident Racing | +1:44.986 |
18. | Kevin Ceccon | Scuderia Coloni | + 1 lap |
Ret. | Max Chilton | Carlin | 23 laps |
Ret. | Christian Vietoris | Racing Engineering | 15 laps |
Ret. | Luca Filippi | Super Nova Racing | 14 laps |
Ret. | Charles Pic | Barwa Addax Team | 13 laps |
Ret. | Jules Bianchi | Lotus ART | 0 laps |
Ret. | Marcus Ericsson | iSport international | 0 laps |
Ret. | Alvaro Parente | Carlin | 0 laps |
Ret. | Fabio Leimer | Rapax | 0 laps |