Petrov inherits victory in Valencia

Amazingly, title rival Bruno Senna also ran out of gas and coasted over the finish line in ninth place - just missing out on reverse grid pole for Sunday's sprint.

Before the race, teams acknowledged that the new Valancia street track was high on fuel consumption, and most cars completed the bare minimum of installation laps and were topped up with fuel on the grid, but they believed the situation would be offset by multiple safety cars.

However, only one safety car was required, when Ho-Pin Tung and Kamui Kobayashi hit the wall exiting Turn 2 on the opening lap, and it was only on track for a lap.

Pantano had led from the start of the 34-lap event but his Racing Engineering machine began to splutter as it approached the hairpin on the final lap. Petrov jumped ahead of him, and just beat Pastor Maldonado to the finish line by less than a second.

Romain Grosjean finished third, four seconds back, while Lucas di Grassi had a huge fright when he came across coasting cars in the flat-out final sequence of bends, but bounced across the kerbs to miss them and jumped up to fourth as a result.

The points finishers were completed by Jerome d'Ambrosio, Sebastien Buemi, Andy Soucek and Luca Filippi. Senna coasted across the line ninth, while Pantano could only make it to the final corner, where he stopped.

Others to run out of fuel included Karun Chandhok and Carlos Iaconalli.

Pos  Driver       Team                         Time
 1.  Petrov        Barwa Campos Team         1h03:25.719
 2.  Maldonado     Piquet Sports               + 0.868
 3.  Grosjean      ART Grand Prix              + 4.447
 4.  Di Grassi     Barwa Campos Team           + 28.038
 5.  D'ambrosio    Dams                        + 28.736
 6.  Buemi         Trust Team Arden            + 28.855
 7.  Soucek        Super Nova Racing           + 36.960
 8.  Filippi       Trust Team Arden            + 45.390
 9.  Senna         iSport International        + 48.177
10.  Nunes         DPR                         + 56.935
11.  Valles        BCN Competicion             + 59.149
12.  Herck         DPR                         + 63.604
13.  Iaconelli     BCN Competicion             + 72.716
14.  Pantano       Racing Engineering          + 1 lap
15.  Chandhok      iSport International        + 1 lap
16.  Parente       Super Nova Racing           + 2 laps

Retirements:

    Driver        Team                        Laps
    Valsecchi     Durango                      29
    Zuber         Piquet Sports                24
    Yamamoto      ART Grand Prix               9
    Conway        Trident Racing               1
    Villa         Racing Engineering           0
    Rodriguez     FMS International            0
    Tung          Trident Racing               0
    Valerio       Durango                      0
    Kobayashi     Dams                         0
    Asmer         FMS International            0

Fastest lap: Pantano, 1:46.791 on lap 33