Lapierre takes first win in Bahrain

The Frenchman took the lead from pole-sitter Borja Garcia at turn four, and he held the lead to the end despite two safety car periods which closed the field up.

Lapierre took pole position for the first GP2 race at Imola in 2005, but since then his bid for a victory had been hampered by bad luck, missed opportunity, and general under-performance.

Behind the lead pair there was chaos at the start of the race, as Andreas Zuber went into Turn 1 too hot and tagged Lucas di Grassi, which forced both drivers out of the race.

Bruno Senna was unable to avoid the tangle ahead of him and ran into the pair, while the rest of the field were bottled up behind the collision.

Senna pitted for repairs, while his teammate Adrian Zaugg's car had sustained damage to the right sidepod which the team tried to patch up with tape.  

The carnage led to a safety car period, and former Formula One drivers Antonio Pizzonia and Giorgio Pantano came together when the Brazilian ran over the back of the Campos driver.

There was more drama on the restart, as Kazuki Nakajima hit the back of Ho Pin Tung and spun the Chinese driver into the wall, while the Japanese driver was able to continue with minor damage to the nose of his car.

Timo Glock drove well to claim second place with a series of well-executed passing moves, including one on feature race winner Luca Filippi, who went on to claim third.

Glock disposed of the Italian with ease, which suggests that he could have challenged the Super Nova driver in Saturday's race if his car wasn't damaged.

Lapierre was able to manage the gap to Glock to the end of the race, and the German was unable to make much progress once he had worked his way up to second place.

Garcia took fourth after an entertaining race that involved scraps with Filippi, Glock, Michael Ammermuller and Mike Conway.

Conway did a brilliant job to come through the chaos from the back of the grid in the early stages to score two valuable points following his feature race disappointment.

Nakajima once again showed some amazing pace after his early incident with Tung, and he passed Ammermuller on the last lap to grab the final point and cap an action-packed GP2 weekend.

The German struggled for pace in the latter stages of the race, and prior to losing out to the Japanese driver he had run off the circuit to hand fifth place to Conway. 

Results:

Pos   Driver             Team                       Time
 1.   Nicolas Lapierre   DAMS                       43:30.252
 2.   Timo Glock         iSport International       +   3.183
 3.   Luca Filippi       Super Nova International   +   6.686
 4.   Borja García       Durango                    +   8.416
 5.   Mike Conway        Super Nova International   +  10.178
 6.   Kazuki Nakajima    DAMS                       +  11.089
 7.   M.Ammermuller      ART Grand Prix             +  12.259
 8.   Bruno Senna        Arden International        +  22.427
 9.   Andy Soucek        DPR                        +  25.857
10.   Javier Villa       Racing Engineering         +  26.720
11.   Vitaly Petrov      Campos Grand Prix          +  32.661
12.   Roldan Rodriguez   Minardi Piquet Sports      +  38.977
13.   Jason Tahinci      FMS International          +  46.473
14.   Sakon Yamamoto     BCN Competicion            +  77.896
15.   Alexandre Negrao   Minardi Piquet Sports      +   1 lap
16.   Pastor Maldonado   Trident Racing             +  2 laps
17.   Adrian Zaugg       Arden International        +  3 laps

RETIREMENTS

      Giorgio Pantano    Campos Grand Prix            15 laps
      Kohei Hirate       Trident Racing               12 laps
      Sergio Jimenez     Racing Engineering           10 laps
      Karun Chandhok     Durango                       7 laps
      Ho-Pin Tung        BCN Competicion               3 laps
      Antonio Pizzonia   FMS International             2 laps
      C.Bakkerud         DPR                           0 laps
      Lucas Di Grassi    ART Grand Prix                0 laps
      Andreas Zuber      iSport International          0 laps
      
Fastest lap: Glock, 1:44.172