Bahrain GP2: Fabio Leimer defeats Stefano Coletti for feature win

The Racing Engineering driver won from pole position, but his near one-second advantage from qualifying did not quite translate into the easy victory run he might have expected.

Although fellow front-row qualifier Marcus Ericsson started from the pitlane after stalling on the dummy grid, a tentative start and opening few corners exposed Leimer to attack from hard-charging points leader Stefano Coletti.

Having forced Leimer to defend at Turn 4, Coletti's Rapax car drew alongside through Turns 5/6, but was unable to pass.

After that scare, Leimer was able to settle down and pull out a gap over his pursuer.

Leimer led by over 3s when he pitted, but his next threat came from those who started on the hard tyre and were running a long first stint compared to the frontrunners, who had mainly started on the softs.

In the midst of heavy, slow-paced traffic, Leimer's hard-fought lead over Coletti quickly dwindled to as little as 1.3s, but some brave moves - including passing the battling Mitch Evans and Kevin Giovesi in one move at Turn 4 - restored his breathing room.

Coletti then got delayed by the same traffic jam, and the gap was soon back to over 3s.

With Adrian Quaife-Hobbs the last of the hard-tyred starters to pit, having led for 10 laps, the way was clear for Leimer to cruise to victory by 1.9s from Coletti.

Caterham's Alexander Rossi finished his first main GP2 Series race in a superb third place, his decision to stop early to switch from softs to hards paying big dividends in terms of track position.

He jumped ahead of Jolyon Palmer, who had passed had him on lap two, as well as Sam Bird and Felipe Nasr, who both suffered dreadful pitstops.

Nasr finished right on Rossi's tail in fourth, having passed Carlin team-mate Palmer at Turn 4 with three laps to go.

Bird's pace dropped off badly in the closing stages, but he held on to sixth for Russian Time, ahead of a great late-race fight between Quaife-Hobbs and Bird's team-mate Tom Dillmann, both of whom started on the harder tyre.

Results - 32 laps:

Pos  Driver               Team                    Time/Gap
 1.  Fabio Leimer         Racing Engineering    57m21.528s
 2.  Stefano Coletti      Rapax                  +  1.929s
 3.  Alexander Rossi      Caterham               +  9.030s
 4.  Felipe Nasr          Carlin                 +  9.498s
 5.  Jolyon Palmer        Carlin                +  15.037s
 6.  Sam Bird             Russian Time          +  28.518s
 7.  Adrian Quaife-Hobbs  MP                    +  33.067s
 8.  Tom Dillmann         Russian Time          +  33.589s
 9.  Simon Trummer        Rapax                 +  36.246s
10.  Johnny Cecotto       Arden                 +  37.459s
11.  Kevin Ceccon         Trident               +  42.502s
12.  James Calado         ART                   +  48.084s
13.  Marcus Ericsson      DAMS                  +  48.709s
14.  Daniel Abt           ART                   +  53.482s
15.  Ryo Haryanto         Addax                 +  59.146s
16.  Jake Rosenzweig      Addax               +  1m05.997s
17.  Nathanael Berthon    Trident             +  1m10.696s
18.  Rene Binder          Lazarus             +  1m11.776s
19.  Julian Leal          Racing Engineering  +  1m19.886s
20.  Sergio Canamasas     Caterham            +  1m20.456s
21.  Robin Frijns         Hilmer                  +  1 lap

Retirements:

        Driver             Team                  Laps
        Kevin Giovesi      Lazarus               27
        Mitch Evans        Arden                 25
        Stephane Richelmi  DAMS                  20
        Paul Varhaug       Hilmer                4
        Daniel de Jong     MP                    1