Rio Haryanto picked up his second GP2 win of the season to deny McLaren protege Stoffel Vandoorne a double victory at the Red Bull Ring.
Haryanto stormed into the lead at the start after pole-man Nick Yelloly bogged down. The Hilmer Motorsport driver was stuck between Haryanto and Alexander Rossi at Turn 1 and made contact with the American as the cars jostled for position.
Rossi ended up going out on the runoff while Yelloly returned to the pits to retire.
This allowed Haryanto to capitalise and breakaway into the lead with Russian Time driver Artem Markelov close behind.
Markelov hassled Haryanto for a number of laps before the Russian attempted a bold move at the midway point of the race.
He missed his braking point though and arrived at the corner way too fast. He soon found himself in the gravel after clipping Haryanto’s front wing which caused significant damage to the leader.
With Markelov out the way Vandoorne mounted a late charge to try and take a double win. From eighth on the gird the Belgian worked his was through the field to be right in the hunt in the closing stages.
Haryanto was however able to fend off the championship leader despite struggling for pace. The Belgian couldn’t mount a serious challenge despite gaining a big advantage from numerous DRS zones and almost lost a place to his team-mate Nobuharu Matsushita in third.
Sergey Sirotkin followed the leaders home in fourth ahead of Mitch Evans and Carlin driver Pierre Gasly.
Jordan King enjoyed a strong race from 12th to cross the line in seventh ahead of Rossi, Robert Visoiu and Ferrari protege Raffaele Marciello.
Markelov, who finished eighth, was later disqualified from the race after scrutineers found that his fuel tank had less than the required one litre of fuel required to supply a sample. This promoted Rossi into the points and allowed him to slightly close the gap on Vandoorne in the championship.
