Giovanni Venturini scored his second victory in Auto GP, and his first since his debut race at Monza, in the second race at Oschersleben in Germany.
Venturini began the race from pole position, though the race began with three laps behind the safety car. After the get-go he had to hold off Daniel De Jong, who had passed Pasquale di Sabatino for second place.
The Dutchman remained within a second of the race leader until two laps from the end when he made a mistake and dropped to seventh. This allowed Venturini to secure the win for his Durango team.
“I was looking forward to another win,” he said. “The safety car helped me at the start, that's sure, but at the restart I immediately realized that the car was very good for this damp conditions, and that I had a good chance.
“It wasn't easy anyway, because I had a really fierce fight with de Jong for the whole race. He had better traction and stability in the quick corners, but despite this I could control him. I want to say thanks to Durango, we worked a lot together to achieve this”.
Race 1 winner Sergei Afanasiev inherited second place, ahead of Adrien Tambay. Tambay had earlier tried to take second from De Jong around the outside of Turn 1, but De Jong closed the door, they made contact and Tambay spun.
Di Sabatino held on to fourth place, holding off both Kevin Korjus and Kevin Ceccon. Samuele Buttarelli took the final point in eighth behind De Jong. The Lazarus pairing of Fabrizio Crestani and Fabio Onidi finished a lap down in ninth and tenth, after the team opted to fit slicks to both drivers as the track dried. Unfortunately for them the conditions only worsened. Onidi had earlier suffered a puncture while trying to defend fourth place from Tambay.
Ceccon's sixth place was enough for the 17-year-old to take the lead of the standings in the absence of Luca Filippi, who was racing in GP2. He is two points ahead of his fellow Italian, with Afanasiev moving up into third place ahead of Venturini and Tambay.
Race results – 17 laps:
Pos | Driver | Team | Time/Gap |
1 | Giovanni Venturini | Griffitz Durango | 30:25.268 |
2 | Sergei Afanasiev | Dams | 1.183 |
3 | Adrien Tambay | Campos Racing | 3.376 |
4 | Pasquale Di Sabatino | TP Formula | 3.817 |
5 | Kevin Korjus | Dams | 5.913 |
6 | Kevin Ceccon | Ombra Racing | 6.099 |
7 | Daniel De Jong | MP Motorsport | 11.165 |
8 | Samuele Buttarelli | TP Formula | 30.388 |
9 | Fabrizio Crestani | Lazarus | +1 lap |
10 | Fabio Onidi | Lazarus | +1 lap |
11 | Adrian Campos Jr | Campos Racing | +2 lap |
12 | Francesco Dracone | Ombra Racing | +5 lap |
13 | Giuseppe Cipriani | Griffitz Durango | +7 lap |
Ret | Bruno Mendez | Campos Racing | 2 laps |
Drivers' standings after 5 of 7 rounds:
1. Kevin Ceccon, 100 points
2. Luca Filippi, 98
3. Sergei Afanasiev, 83
4. Giovanni Venturini, 75
5. Adrien Tambay, 68
6. Samuele Buttarelli, 63