Ireland take series lead with victory

He led away from pole position and had a free run into the first corner because Danny Watts, who started alongside him on the front row in Great Britain's car, was slow away. Carroll was never threatened throughout the 70-minute race. Even after Filipe Albuquerque moved into second place he couldn't match Carroll's pace.

Ireland left him out three laps longer than the other front runners at the first round of pit stops and he rejoined with a four-second lead. Carroll was back in for his second stop ten laps later and with the lead now up to 11 seconds he kept pulling further away until the end.

Albuquerque spent a quiet afternoon in second place once he'd demoted Daniel Morad's Team Lebanon car on the first lap and he pulled a long way clear of the battle for third. His points haul from the weekend elevated Team Portugal to second in the standings, eight points behind Ireland.

Fairuz Fauzy was set to delight the home crowd with a podium finish for Team Malaysia until a radio mix up led to him arriving in the pits four laps before the window opened for the second round of stops. He had to make that second stop again and was out of the points until he pulled a great move on Team Italy's Edoardo Piscopo on the final lap for tenth place.

Team Netherlands also lost a potential podium when Jeroen Bleekemolen was given a drive-through penalty for hitting Narain Karthikeyan's Indian car in the first corner of the race.

Those incidents helped Marco Andretti to climb to third for Team USA and he controlled his pace enough to keep himself out of reach of the battle between Australia, South Africa and New Zealand in the closing stages of the race.

Bleekemolen put in a good comeback drive, though, which ended with him overtaking Team China for eighth place on the final lap.

Things got worse for Great Britain after the slow start when Danny Watts ran into trouble trying to take fourth place from Lebanon in the early stages. He ran side by side with Morad through Turn 5 and tried to dive up the inside into the double right handers at Turns 7 and 8. Both cars ran wide, allowing Bleekemolen and Andretti through on the inside, and when Watts rejoined he came under attack from Brazil and France on the run down to the hairpin at Turn 9.

Watts was in the middle of the trio and while Felipe Guimaraes (Brazil) took the apex on the inside, while Loic Duval (France) turned in on the outside and ripped the front wing off the Great Britain car. Duval punctured his left rear tyre in the process so he and Watts had to pit for repairs.

Lebanon's day didn't fair much better. Despite running second on the first lap, Morad was picked off by car after car and eventually finished 12th after a couple of mistakes.

Sprint race winner Neel Jani also had an afternoon to forget, spinning into retirement at Turn 4 on the opening lap.

Pos Driver                Team                      Gap
 1. Adam Carroll          Ireland           1:05:52.205
 2. Filipe Albuquerque    Portugal              +15.996
 3. Marco Andretti        USA                   +47.637
 4. John Martin           Australia             +51.679
 5. Adrian Zaugg          South Africa          +52.106
 6. Earl Bamber           New Zealand           +54.354
 7. Felipe Guimaraes      Brazil                +57.369
 8. Jeroen Bleekemolen    Netherlands           +57.490
 9. Ho-Pin Tung           China                 +59.158
10. Fairuz Fauzy          Malaysia            +1:03.888
11. Edoardo Piscopo       Italy               +1:06.145
12. Daniel Morad          Lebanon             +1:14.990
13. Satrio Hermanto       Indonesia           +1:15.761
14. Loic Duval            France              +1:16.463
15. David Garza           Mexico              +1:30.001
16. Danny Watts           Great Britain         +6 laps

Retirements

    Clivio Piccione       Monaco                 2 Laps
    Narain Karthikeyan    India                  0 laps
    Neel Jani             Switzerland            0 laps


Fastest lap, Carroll 1:48.563 on lap 25