Parente scores Ocean's first win
Alvaro Parente converted his pole position into a maiden win for Ocean Racing in an incident-filled GP2 race at Spa this afternoon
Parente took the chequered flag behind the safety car after Durango's Stefano Coletti went straight on at Eau Rouge and crashed heavily with two laps remaining. The Monagasque driver was conscious and communicating with medical personnel after the accident, but was still being extracted from the wreckage when the race finished.
Parente crossed the line 0.9s ahead of Nico Hulkenberg, but the gap had been as much as 4.5s before an earlier safety car - brought out when Luca Filippi spun into the path of Davide Valsecchi at Les Combes - bunched up the field.
Any disappointment that Hulkenberg might have felt at not finding a way past Parente would have been offset by the fact that main title rival Vitaly Petrov exited the race at mid-distance with an engine failure, putting the German into an almost unassailable points position.
Lucas di Grassi was third after surviving late-race pressure from ART's Pastor Maldonado.
Diego Nunes and Giedo van der Garde delivered iSport one of its best results of the year with fifth and seventh respectively, the pair sandwiching Piquet GP's Roldan Rodriguez, while DAMS driver Kamui Kobayashi took the final point and will start from pole tomorrow.
Elsewhere in the field, a lot of repair work will need to be done ahead of tomorrow's sprint race. Alberto Valerio was an early casualty, being tapped into a spin that put him into the wall at Les Combes
The same corner also marked the end of Karun Chandhok and Davide Rigon's races when the Indian spun while trying to pass Valsecchi and collected the Trident car.
Pos Driver Team Time/Gap
1. Alvaro Parente Ocean 54m12.997s
2. Nico Hulkenberg ART + 0.943s
3. Lucas di Grassi Racing Engineering + 3.179s
4. Pastor Maldonado ART + 3.468s
5. Roldan Rodríguez Piquet + 4.349s
6. Giedo van der Garde iSport + 4.687s
7. Kamui Kobayashi DAMS + 5.469s
8. Edoardo Mortara Arden + 5.972s
9. Diego Nunes iSport + 29.105s
10. Dani Clos Racing Engineering + 32.315s
11. Nelson Panciatici Durango + 35.474s
12. Stefano Coletti Durango + 2 laps
13. Javier Villa Super Nova + 3 laps
Retirements:
Jerome D'Ambrosio DAMS 20 laps
Luca Filippi Super Nova 13 laps
Davide Valsecchi Addax 13 laps
Karun Chandhok Ocean 7 laps
Davide Rigon Trident 7 laps
Vitaly Petrov Addax 6 laps
Michael Herck DPR 0 laps
Alberto Valerio Piquet 0 laps
Ricardo Teixeira Trident 0 laps
Sergio Perez Arden 0 laps
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