Spa GP2: James Calado claims first win of 2013 for himself and ART

The ART driver held off Racing Engineering's Julian Leal by just 0.4 seconds.

Calado, who had a fresh set of prime tyres available for this race by dint of starting on the soft on Saturday, streaked into an early lead from pole position. By lap five, he was three seconds clear and looked to be cruising to victory.

But Leal began to make inroads into his advantage, and by lap 12 the gap was under a second.

In the closing stages, Calado had to keep a wary eye on Leal, who was never quite close enough to make a passing move but would have pounced if Calado made a mistake.

Adrian Quaife-Hobbs also joined the lead battle in the closing stages, but asked a little too much of his tyres with a few laps to go and could not quite get on terms with Leal.

Stephane Richelmi was a very distant fourth, ahead of Fabio Leimer and Jolyon Palmer.

Johnny Cecotto Jr took seventh from Tom Dillmann with a couple of laps remaining, while Dani Clos should have been in the mix for points, but was given his second drive-through penalty of the weekend for a collision.

Results - 18 laps:

Pos  Driver               Team                  Time/Gap
 1.  James Calado         ART                 36m21.388s
 2.  Julian Leal          Racing Engineering     +0.447s
 3.  Adrian Quaife-Hobbs  Hilmer                 +1.532s
 4.  Stephane Richelmi    DAMS                  +17.905s
 5.  Fabio Leimer         Racing Engineering    +29.053s
 6.  Jolyon Palmer        Carlin                +33.284s
 7.  Johnny Cecotto Jr    MW Arden              +37.321s
 8.  Tom Dillmann         Russian Time          +40.052s
 9.  Felipe Nasr          Carlin                +40.455s
10.  Mitch Evans          MW Arden              +43.421s
11.  Simon Trummer        Rapax                 +44.373s
12.  Sergio Canamasas     Caterham              +45.170s
13.  Nathanael Berthon    Trident               +45.987s
14.  Sam Bird             Russian Time          +47.459s
15.  Marcus Ericsson      DAMS                  +50.141s
16.  Daniel Abt           ART                   +50.726s
17.  Daniel de Jong       MP                    +50.818s
18.  Vittorio Ghirelli    Lazarus               +53.466s
19.  Dani Clos            MP                    +54.532s
20.  Rene Binder          Lazarus               +59.796s
21.  Jake Rosenzweig      Addax               +1m03.052s
22.  Alexander Rossi      Caterham            +1m18.035s
23.  Stefano Coletti      Rapax               +1m21.639s
24.  Ricardo Teixeira     Trident             +1m27.956s
25.  Rio Haryanto         Addax                   +1 lap

Retirements:

     Robin Frijns         Hilmer                   1 lap