Jani dominates Sepang sprint race

The Team Switzerland driver dominated the race, losing the lead only when he took his mandatory pit stop. He pulled out a lead of a couple of seconds in the early laps and rejoined from his pit stop with the same advantage.

"It was a great race for me," said Jani. "We had very good pace, a good restart, a good pit stop - it was just the perfect race. But the feature race is the main one and we start near the back for that, so we still have a lot of work to do."

Behind Jani, Team France's Loic Duval beat New Zealand's Earl Bamber to second place to take the series lead away from Team Malaysia.

Bamber had taken second spot away from Duval in the pit stops, but had to let the French car back ahead to avoid a penalty for being released into Duval's path in the pit lane.

Filipe Albuquerque had a quiet run to fourth for Portugal, while Ireland's Adam Carroll vaulted the Team Italy car of Edoardo Piscopo in the pits for fifth place.

The Netherlands car also passed Italy during the pit stops when Jeroen Bleekemolen stayed out two laps longer than the majority of his rivals.

Home team Malaysia lost a potential point for eighth place after contact with the South African car. Fairuz Fauzy had jumped into eighth place when Adrian Zaugg out-braked himself trying to pass Mexico at the final corner and forced David Garza wide as well.

Zaugg tried to regain the place from Fauzy on the next lap and did so via an over-ambitious lunge up the inside of Turn 2, which punctured Fauzy's left rear tyre.

The race was delayed by half an hour after a shunt at the first attempted rolling start. The left hand side of the grid accelerated then slowed exiting the final hairpin, and Marco Andretti (USA) and Felipe Guimaraes (Brazil) both climbed over the back of Narain Karthikeyan's Team India car.

Team Great Britain's strong run of form came to an end when a gearbox problem just before the restart forced Danny Watts out of contention. He limped back to the pits, where the team replaced the ECU and got him back out for the last couple of laps.

Pos Driver                 Team                   Gap
 1. Neel Jani              Switzerland      22:41.567
 2. Loic Duval             France              +9.912
 3. Earl Bamber            New Zealand        +11.813
 4. Filipe Albuquerque     Portugal           +12.453
 5. Adam Carroll           Ireland            +13.205
 6. Jeroen Bleekemolen     Netherlands        +15.399
 7. Edoardo Piscopo        Italy              +19.947
 8. John Martin            Australia          +21.437
 9. Adrian Zaugg           South Africa       +27.674
10. Ho-Pin Tung            China              +29.492
11. Daniel Morad           Lebanon            +32.049
12. Clivio Piccione        Monaco             +32.406
13. Satrio Hermanto        Indonesia          +38.959
14. David Garza            Mexico             +55.055
15. Fairuz Fauzy           Malaysia            +1 lap
16. Danny Watts            Great Britain      +7 laps

Retirements

    Felipe Guimaraes       Brazil              0 laps
    Narain Karthikeyan     India               0 laps
    Marco Andretti         USA                 0 laps


Fastest lap, Jani 1:48.550 on lap 8