Molina takes second straight win

The 18 year-old from Girona was unable to find a way passed pole-sitter Salvador Duran on the track, but took the lead in the pitstops when the Mexican hesitated away from his mandatory tyre change.

Alvaro Parente took a hard fought third to lift the World Series crown with Simone and Sarah Abadie's Toulouse based Tech 1 team.

Parente challenged Duran for the lead in the early laps, but his tactic of making an early pitstop failed to pay off when he rejoined behind Xavier Maassen, delaying his progress. Parente's nerves were tested further when he encountered gearbox problems in the closing stages.

"The first three finishers had similar pace today," said Parente, "but after the pitstops I lost five or six seconds in traffic. I knew then that if they (Duran and Molina) weren't held up, I wouldn't be able to win.

"I also had the alarm going off on the gears from lap four. I was really scared because between third and fourth there was a grinding noise, but we made it and it feels incredible!"

The circuit had dried out completely from the rain affected morning qualifying session. Duran defended his lead from Parente into the first corner, and held a 0.9-second lead over the Portuguese at the completion of the opening lap.

Molina, in third place, was the fastest man on track, and the leading trio pulled away from fourth placed Milos Pavlovic.

Dutchman Giedo van der Garde held fifth place from Carlin's pairing of Mikhail Aleshin and Robert Wickens.

Seventh placed Alvaro Barba was given the black and orange flag because of an oil leak from a loose gearbox hose on his Draco machine. Cruelly for Barba, the problem soon rectified itself, but not before he had been forced to come in for an inspection.

Parente pitted for a new set of fronts from second on lap seven, rejoining in 15th position, and leaving Molina to take the fight to Duran. Molina, who is sponsored by the Circuit de Catalunya, chipped into the Interwetten.com car's lead at a tenth of a second a lap.

The duo pitted in unison, with the gap having held station at 1.4 seconds, on lap 13. Molina anticipated his "lollipop" man's signal to move away faster than Duran, and stole ahead.

"I made a small mistake in the pitstop," said Duran, "but Miguel deserves this win at his home, in front of his people."

Englishman Ben Hanley was, realistically, the only driver who could have deprived Parente of the championship. The Prema driver worked his way up from 15th on the grid to ninth, enjoying the race's most entertaining dice with Epsilon Euskadi's Davide Valsecchi and Filipe Albuquerque.

Valsecchi lost ground on the last lap, enabling Hanley to start tomorrow's reverse grid race from the front row behind Alejandro Nunez.

Molina is competing at Barcelona under appeal of a ten place grid penalty imposed after an accident with Frederic Vervisch at Estoril on October 21st and may be stripped of his victory.

Classified:

Pos  Driver                 Team                   Laps
 1.  Miguel Molina          Pons Racing            42:09.242
 2.  Salvador Duran         Interwetten.Com        +   1.144
 3.  Alvaro Parente         Tech 1 Racing          +   9.033
 4.  Milos Pavlovic         International Draco    +  11.434
 5.  Mikhail Aleshin        Carlin Motorsport      +  23.134
 6.  Giedo van der Garde    Victory Engineering    +  25.138
 7.  Robert Wickens         Carlin Motorsport      +  25.572
 8.  Bertrand Baguette      Ktr                    +  26.475
 9.  Ben Hanley             Prema Powerteam        +  27.578
10.  Alejandro Nunez        Red Devil Team Comtec  +  31.193
11.  Davide Valsecchi       Epsilon Euskadi        +  32.589
12.  Fairuz Fauzy           Cram Competition       +  32.895
13.  Filipe Albuquerque     Epsilon Euskadi        +  33.368
14.  Carlos Iaconelli       Pons Racing            +  35.140
15.  James Walker           Fortec Motorsport      +  36.589
16.  Pasquale Di Sabatino   Gd Racing              +  37.651
17.  Clivio Piccione        Rc Motorsport          +  40.993
18.  Alvaro Barba           International Draco    +  42.652
19.  Julien Jousse          Tech 1 Racing          +  43.435
20.  Marco Bonanomi         Rc Motorsport          +  48.980
21.  Frederic Vervisch      Gd Racing              +1:01.670
22.  Xavier Maassen         Prema Powerteam        +1:05.606
23.  Michael Herck          Red Devil Team Comtec  +1:18.401
24.  Daniil Move            Interwetten.Com        +2:04.006
25.  Julian Theobald        Eurointernational      +  1 Lap
26.  Giorgio Mondini        Eurointernational      +  2 Laps

Not classified:

     Driver                 Team                  Laps
     Alberto Valerio        Victory Engineering    6
     Pippa Mann             Cram Competition       2
     Richard Philippe       Fortec Motorsport      1
     Guillaume Moreau       Ktr                    1

Fastest lap: Barba, 1:34.412 on lap 9