Jordan King secured his maiden GP2 Series victory as he led a British driver 1-2-3 in the Sprint race at a soggy Red Bull Ring on Sunday morning.
The Racing Engineering driver started the race from pole position after inheriting the reverse grid pole position after penalties to both Sergey Sirotkin and Gustav Malja after Saturday’s Feature race, and did not put a foot wrong all race long in tricky conditions.
King survived a safety car restart and two other safety car interventions to take the win, with MP Motorsport’s Oliver Rowland and DAMS’ Alex Lynn completing the podium in drastically differing circumstances.
Rowland had started third on the grid, and overtook the struggling Norman Nato for second, but could not match the pace of King despite the late safety car to clear the car of Nicholas Latifi that had spun on the exit of turn one.
For Lynn, it was a much different race, with the Briton starting outside the top ten, but was quickly moving through the pack, ultimately passing Luca Ghiotto for fourth and then Raffaele Marciello for the final podium with just a handful of laps remaining.
Marciello was forced to settle for fourth for Russian Time, just holding off the challenge of a charging Antonio Giovinazzi over the last lap after the Prema Racing driver stormed through the field from a lowly grid slot after retiring from the Feature race on Saturday with a mechanical issue.
Ghiotto was on course for sixth for Trident but lost out at the final corner when he spun down to ninth, promoting Sirotkin into that sixth position for ART Grand Prix, while Pierre Gasly and Feature race winner Mitch Evans completed the points scorers.
The track dried sufficiently at the end for slick tyres to be used, but the first driver that took the gamble, Artem Markelov, could only finish eleventh behind Sergio Canamasas, almost a minute down on the race winner despite being significantly faster in the closing laps.
As well as the safety car for Latifi, who at one point was up to fifth place on the road and showing good pace in his DAMS machine, the other safety car was to remove the stricken car of Sean Gelael, a podium finisher on Saturday, from turn three on lap three after he was hit by Arthur Pic.
Red Bull Ring Sprint Race Result
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