Maldonado wins Silverstone sprint
Pastor Maldonado survived a last-corner restart to win this morning's GP2 Series sprint race at Silverstone for ART
Maldonado had led the race from the start after beating polesitter Andi Zuber (Fisichella) into the first corner, and looked to have the race under control until the safety car was brought out after Racing Engineering's Dani Clos spun to a halt in the middle of the circuit with two laps to go.
After two laps under yellows while the stricken Racing Engineering car was removed, the safety car peeled ino the pits at the end of the final lap, setting up a sprint from the last corner down to the finish line.
Maldonado was followed across the line by Zuber, with Karun Chandhok picking up Ocean Racing Technology's first-ever podium finish in third place. Romain Grosjean was fourth for Addax, and Nico Hulkenberg (ART) and Sergio Perez (Arden) rounded out the points.
Compared with yesterday's eventful feature race the sprint was a relatively sedate affair. One of the pre-race favourites was knocked out early when Lucas di Grassi stalled on the grid and dropped right to the back of the field, losing too much time to mount any sort of recovery.
Elsewhere, Edoardo Mortara put on an entertaining display of overtaking in the midfield, including one memorable move that got him past Javier Villa and Davide Valsecchi in one go, but his race ended in a plume of smoke when his engine let go with three laps remaining.
Pos Driver Team Time/Gap 1. Pastor Maldonado ART 35m27.955s 2. Andreas Zuber Fisichella + 0.618s 3. Karun Chandhok Ocean + 3.417s 4. Romain Grosjean Addax + 3.447s 5. Nico Hulkenberg ART + 3.856s 6. Sergio Perez Arden + 3.936s 7. Alberto Valerio Piquet + 4.316s 8. Michael Herck DPR + 4.524s 9. Roldan Rodriguez Piquet + 5.030s 10. Vitaly Petrov Addax + 5.463s 11. Alvaro Parente Ocean + 5.916s 12. Jerome D'Ambrosio DAMS + 6.553s 13. Giedo van der Garde iSport + 7.188s 14. Davide Valsecchi Durango + 8.339s 15. Javier Villa Super Nova + 15.244s 16. Luca Filippi Super Nova + 34.869s 17. Kamui Kobayashi DAMS + 36.225s 18. Ricardo Teixeira Trident + 36.688s 19. Lucas di Grassi Racing Engineering + 1 lap 20. Davide Rigon Trident + 1 lap Retirements: Edoardo Mortara Arden 19 laps Dani Clos Racing Engineering 19 laps Nelson Panciatici Durango 17 laps Luiz Razia Fisichella 11 laps Diego Nunes iSport 0 laps Giacomo Ricci DPR 0 laps
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