Vergne wins Hockenheim opener

The 20-year-old Frenchman dominated the race from pole position, finishined nearly 20 seconds clear of Carlin team-mate Jazeman Jaafar and Fortec's Daniel McKenzie.

The race only got underway at the third attempt, following Gabriel Dias's Hitech car stalling at the first start and then stopping on the way to the grid for the second.

Once started, the race was controlled easily by Vergne while Adriano Buzaid lost second place when he was hit with a drive-through penalty for consistent corner cutting. Oli Webb snatched what was third from Jaafar but ran wide a corner later and dropped down the order.

"I wanted to be first into the first corner and that's what I did," said Vergne. "I pushed hard to pull a gap and then I saw Adriano wasn't behind me anymore. In the last part of the race I pushed hard again and I managed to almost equal my quickest lap."

William Buller and Daisuke Nakajima suffered similar penalties to Buzaid and lost potential podiums. James Calado eventually finished fourth, ahead of the recovering Buzaid, Jay Bridger and Dias.

Pos  Driver                Team                    Time/Gap
 1.  Jean-Eric Vergne      Carlin                25m28.768s
 2.  Jazeman Jaafar        Carlin                 + 19.192s
 3.  Daniel McKenzie       Fortec                 + 21.292s
 4.  James Calado          Carlin                 + 22.092s
 5.  Adriano Buzaid        Carlin                 + 29.286s
 6.  Jay Bridger           Litespeed              + 30.552s
 7.  Gabriel Dias          Hitech                 + 31.061s
 8.  Oli Webb              Fortec                 + 38.149s
 9.  James Cole            T-Sport                + 39.658s
10.  William Buller        Hitech                 + 41.433s
11.  Carlos Huertas        Raikkonen Robertson    + 44.198s
12.  Rupert Svendsen-Cook  Carlin                 + 49.621s
13.  Lucas Foresti         Carlin                 + 50.204s
14.  Adderly Fong          Sino Vision            + 51.397s
15.  Alex Brundle          T-Sport                + 52.613s
16.  Daisuke Nakajima      Raikkonen Robertson  + 1m03.725s
17.  Wayne Boyd            Sino Vision          + 1m06.755s
18.  Menasheh Idafar       T-Sport              + 1m10.840s
19.  Maxim Snegirev        Fortec               + 1m14.528s
20.  Hywel Lloyd           CF/Manor             + 1m39.012s

Retirements:

     Felipe Nasr           Raikkonen Robertson   laps8