Parente takes second season win

The Portuguese driver put in a fighting performance, clawing his way to the front from eighth place on the grid.

With an additional two points scored for fastest lap, Parente has now reduced Sebastian Vettel's championship lead to six points.

Clivio Piccione had looked set for a long overdue strong result, but the RC Motorsport driver cruelly pulled up from second place at the Bus Stop chicane on the final lap.

With the World Series machines burning up 3.5 kg of fuel a lap at the Belgian venue, Piccione's tank is suspected to have run dry.

Fairuz Fauzy finished in second place having led the opening laps from pole position. The result equals Fauzy's previous best finish this year at the Hungaroring.

With Piccione's demise, Ben Hanley claimed the final place on the podium. The Briton was reeling in Fauzy at nine-tenths of a second a lap in the closing stages but ran out of time to make a passing attempt.

Hanley's closest opportunity came at Les Combes on the last lap but, with Fauzy covering his ground on the inside, he could only briefly draw alongside in his Prema machine. 

"My car was fantastic on new tyres," said a delighted Parente, "I knew where I needed to be quick in order to overtake, and when I pushed, the car responded. I'm back on track now, Budapest was just a blip."

For the second meeting in succession there was a dramatic accident at the start. Front row starter Alvaro Barba came under attack from fourth-place qualifier, and countryman, Miguel Molina under braking for the La Source hairpin.

In what could have been a replay of teammate Carlos Iaconelli's flight in Hungary, the Pons driver clipped the back of Barba's car, launching Molina high into the air before crashing down to earth and into retirement.

With Fauzy and local man Bertrand Baguette heading the field up to Les Combes, Barba fought on tenaciously to continue the lap minus his rear wing.

Parente overtook Barba's stricken car at the downhill left, Pouhon, with Piccione following through at the next corner, Fagnes.

At the completion of the opening lap, six cars were falling over themselves to overtake Barba, and the fraught action descended into chaos.

Mikhail Aleshin and Davide Valsecchi made contact in the scrum, with Aleshin spinning to the outside and retiring on the spot. Valsecchi completed a further lap before calling it quits.

Fauzy led Baguette by 1.9 seconds at the end of the first lap, with Parente a further three seconds adrift in third. Piccione held down fourth place ahead of Hanley, who had once again kept his nose clean through the now almost routine first lap carnage.

Parente and his Tech 1 car were clearly revelling on new rubber. At the completion of lap two he had slashed Baguette's advantage, courtesy of the race's fastest lap, and dived through on the inside of the Belgian at the re-profiled Bus Stop chicane.

Parente then closed rapidly up to Fauzy's gearbox. The Bus Stop emerged as Parente's favoured passing place when three tours later he pulled off a cheeky move around the outside of Fauzy who, to his credit, kept things clean and resisted any urge to squeeze Parente wide.

Hanley was the first of the leaders to pit, coming in from fifth at the start of lap six. "I was stuck behind Baguette," said Ben. "It's unfortunate that when I rejoined I was then stuck behind di Sabatino and Mann.

"I lost quite a few seconds, but I was going to be delayed either way, I'm sure it was the right decision by the team to call me in at that time."

Fauzy made his stop on lap seven, with Parente and Piccione opting to come in on the following lap. Lap thirteen brought about the end of the pitstop window, with Parente holding a comfortable 2.7-second lead over Piccione.

Fauzy's margin over Hanley in the battle for third was being chipped away. The Renault Development Driver had closed to within four-tenths of a second on the penultimate lap, before being gifted the position as heartbreak befell Piccione.

"I think to stop a couple of hundred metres before the finish is the worst feeling in racing," said Piccione. "This is really not how I expected my season would be going.

"It's another weekend gone to waste, and there's not many weekend's left. I felt the engine lose power on the straight before the bus-stop. Anyway, I will try and put this experience in the past now."

Monza winner Salvador Duran finished in fourth place ahead of Baguette and Giedo van der Garde.

Filipe Albquerque's seventh position is under investigation as the Portuguese may have made his pit-stop before the opening of the window on lap five.

Classified:

Pos  Driver            Team                   Time
 1.  Alvaro Parente    Tech 1                 42:47.982
 2.  Fairuz Fauzy      Cram Competition       +   4.242
 3.  Benjamin Hanley   Prema Powerteam        +   4.580
 4.  Salvador Duran    Interwetten.com        +  12.147
 5.  B.Baguette        KTR                    +  26.981
 6.  G.van der Garde   Victory Engineering    +  30.231
 7.  F.Albuquerque     Epsilon Euskadi        +  31.529
 8.  Milos Pavlovic    International Draco    +  32.189
 9.  Carlos Iaconelli  Pons                   +  32.635
10.  Marco Bonanomi    RC Motorsport          +  33.383
11.  M.Ammermuller     Carlin Motorsport      +  41.410
12.  Alejandro Nunez   Red Devil Team Comtec  +  51.246
13.  Charlie Kimball   Victory Engineering    +  52.086
14.  Xavier Maassen    Prema Powerteam        +  55.066
15.  Ricardo Risatti   GD                     +1:04.123
16.  A.Ciompi          EuroInternational      +1:06.775
17.  Daniel Move       Interwetten.com        +1:07.789
18.  Pippa Mann        Cram Competition       +1:11.631
19.  Clivio Piccione   RC Motorsport          +   1 Lap
20.  James Walker      Fortec Motorsport      +   1 Lap
21.  Julien Jousse     Tech 1                 +   1 Lap

Not classified:

     Driver            Team                  Laps
     P.Di Sabatino     GD                     16
     Alvaro Barba      International Draco     9
     Guillaume Moreau  KTR                     4
     Richard Philippe  Fortec Motorsport       3
     Michael Herck     Red Devil Team Comtec   3
     Davide Valsecchi  Epsilon Euskadi         1

Fastest lap: Parente, 2:05.504 on lap 2