Maldonado wins Silverstone sprint

Maldonado had led the race from the start after beating polesitter Andi Zuber (Fisichella) into the first corner, and looked to have the race under control until the safety car was brought out after Racing Engineering's Dani Clos spun to a halt in the middle of the circuit with two laps to go.

After two laps under yellows while the stricken Racing Engineering car was removed, the safety car peeled ino the pits at the end of the final lap, setting up a sprint from the last corner down to the finish line.

Maldonado was followed across the line by Zuber, with Karun Chandhok picking up Ocean Racing Technology's first-ever podium finish in third place. Romain Grosjean was fourth for Addax, and Nico Hulkenberg (ART) and Sergio Perez (Arden) rounded out the points.

Compared with yesterday's eventful feature race the sprint was a relatively sedate affair. One of the pre-race favourites was knocked out early when Lucas di Grassi stalled on the grid and dropped right to the back of the field, losing too much time to mount any sort of recovery.

Elsewhere, Edoardo Mortara put on an entertaining display of overtaking in the midfield, including one memorable move that got him past Javier Villa and Davide Valsecchi in one go, but his race ended in a plume of smoke when his engine let go with three laps remaining.

Pos  Driver               Team                Time/Gap
 1.  Pastor Maldonado     ART                 35m27.955s
 2.  Andreas Zuber        Fisichella           +  0.618s
 3.  Karun Chandhok       Ocean                +  3.417s
 4.  Romain Grosjean      Addax                +  3.447s
 5.  Nico Hulkenberg      ART                  +  3.856s
 6.  Sergio Perez         Arden                +  3.936s
 7.  Alberto Valerio      Piquet               +  4.316s
 8.  Michael Herck        DPR                  +  4.524s
 9.  Roldan Rodriguez     Piquet               +  5.030s
10.  Vitaly Petrov        Addax                +  5.463s
11.  Alvaro Parente       Ocean                +  5.916s
12.  Jerome D'Ambrosio    DAMS                 +  6.553s
13.  Giedo van der Garde  iSport               +  7.188s
14.  Davide Valsecchi     Durango              +  8.339s
15.  Javier Villa         Super Nova           + 15.244s
16.  Luca Filippi         Super Nova           + 34.869s
17.  Kamui Kobayashi      DAMS                 + 36.225s
18.  Ricardo Teixeira     Trident              + 36.688s
19.  Lucas di Grassi      Racing Engineering   +   1 lap
20.  Davide Rigon         Trident              +   1 lap

Retirements:

     Edoardo Mortara      Arden               19 laps
     Dani Clos            Racing Engineering  19 laps
     Nelson Panciatici    Durango             17 laps
     Luiz Razia           Fisichella          11 laps
     Diego Nunes          iSport              0 laps
     Giacomo Ricci        DPR                 0 laps