Ferrari junior Raffaele Marciello wants GP2 to review VSC procedure

Marciello led early on Pirelli's super-soft tyres before handing control of the race to Alexander Rossi and Stoffel Vandoorne when he pitted on lap nine.

On the soft tyre, Rossi and McLaren protege Vandoorne led until the VSC was implemented following a clash between Mitch Evans and Nick Yelloly at the chicane 10 laps later.

With the field slowed, they grabbed the opportunity to pit and emerged in the lead, with Vandoorne leapfrogging Rossi in the process and going on to win by six seconds.

Their gamble to run half of the race on the super-softs was helped by Julian Leal and Sergio Canamasas utilising the same strategy to jump into third and fourth, having started sixth and ninth.

Leal and Canamasas held up Arthur Pic who - like Marciello - started on super-softs and pitted for softs early, while Marciello lost further ground and finished eighth.

The Italian claimed the timing of the VSC's introduction cost him six seconds.

"If I get the message when I am already doing around 80km/h, I slow down quickly," he said.

"If someone gets the message when at 200km/h, they have to slow down but it takes longer.

"Some drivers gain a massive advantage by this and then didn't get penalised so we need to speak. The rules need to be looked at.

"It's not a problem about how you [are notified], it's that there are no rules about how you slow down.

"If I am doing 80km/h, I'm already at the speed. Say you're doing 300km/h, it can take you longer to slow down and you gain big time, maybe 15 seconds."

Pic finished fourth and acknowledged that the VSC "killed" his race and chance of hunting down Vandoorne and Rossi as their tyres faded, but was philosophical.

"We had less than 24 seconds to Rossi, so we were clearly fine in this moment," he said.

"The only thing that could kill us was the VSC, and the VSC came. It was purely bad luck, but we did alright on our side.

"Some things like this happen in racing."