Lapierre wins again for France

Lapierre, who dominated the earlier sprint race, again survived multiple safety car periods and mastered the restarts to beat Great Britain's Robbie Kerr and Switzerland's Neel Jani.

Portugal's Alvaro Parente got the jump at the start, however, but stewards judged it to have been too quick off the line. His chances of victory were ruined when he was forced to pull into the pits early for the resultant drive-through penalty.

After that, Lapierre had it easy and he beat Kerr by 2.479 seconds in a final two-lap sprint before the one-hour allotted race time limit was reached, and the chequered flag was flown early.

"My start wasn't too bad, and I was surprised to see Alvaro on the left so soon," Lapierre said. "At the restarts it wasn't easy and we had a good strategy and I knew I had to do well after the safety car periods."

Kerr made a superb pass on Brazil's Nelson Piquet Jr early in the race, but Piquet was unable to mount a significant fight back after he received a drive-through penalty for equipment being left in his pitbox after his mandatory pitstop.

"I just made sure I got some good drive out of the corner, and got a reasonable start but people got a better start and we came out in front, I was chasing down Nelson and Nelson gave me room and it was very fair of him. From then on it was just a case of keeping consistent pace."

Former Formula One driver Jos Verstappen equalled his best result of the season in fourth, and Alex Young also matched his best result with fifth.

The race hit the one-hour limit because of a massive accident for Japanese driver Hayanari Shimoda at Turn One. The sportscar ace rolled the car after running wide, and missed the tyre barriers on the outside of the corner and instead hitting the concrete wall.

The car was split in two, however the car's safety cell remained intact. Shimoda was conscious after the accident, however, the race was run behind the safety car for 15 minutes while medics attended to him.

The Lebanese car of Basil Shaaban briefly led a race for first time when the first safety car came out, his team choosing not pit when the rest of the field made their mandatory pitstop.

Mexico's Salvador Duran was involved in another incident at Turn Two. After being involved with an accident with Germany's Adrian Sutil in the sprint race, Duran went down the inside of Russia's Roman Rusinov at the same corner, however was not far enough alongside and Rusinov turned in and the pair collided.

Austria and the Czech Republic's races also ended at the same corner for the second race in succession. In a similar incident to Mexico and Germany, Czech driver Tomas Enge dived down the inside of Mathias Lauda, however Lauda turned in spinning him round and locking him with Enge.

South African Stephen Simpson suffered a bizarre accident on the second lap after hitting the wall in Turn Six, a corner not usually associated with drivers going off. He was unharmed in the accident.

Pos  Team            Driver            Time
 1.  France          Nicolas Lapierre  1:00:54.068
 2.  Great Britain   Robbie Kerr       +     2.479
 3.  Switzerland     Neel Jani         +     3.018
 4.  Netherlands     Jos Verstappen    +     3.525
 5.  Malaysia        Alex Yoong        +     4.887
 6.  Australia       Will Davison      +     5.431
 7.  Portugal        Alvaro Parente    +     6.002
 8.  New Zealand     Jonny Reid        +     8.921
 9.  Brazil          Nelson Piquet Jr  +     9.040
10.  USA             Bryan Herta       +     9.828
11.  Pakistan        Adam Khan         +    10.942
12.  Lebanon         Basil Shaaban     +    13.003
13.  India           Armaan Ebrahim    +    14.275
14.  Ireland         Michael Devaney   +    32.072
15.  Canada          Sean Mcintosh     +    9 Laps
16.  Japan           Hayanari Shimoda  +   10 Laps
17.  China           Tengyi Jiang      +   13 Laps
18.  Austria         Mathias Lauda     +   18 Laps
19.  Czech Republic  Tomas Enge        +   18 Laps
20.  Russia          Roman Rusinov     +   28 Laps
21.  Mexico          Salvador Duran    +   28 Laps
22.  Germany         Adrian Sutil      +   28 Laps
23.  Italy           Enrico Toccacelo  +   29 Laps
24.  South Africa    Stephen Simpson   +   34 Laps

Fastest lap: Lapierre, France, 1:21.015 on lap 13

Championship standings:

Pos  Team            Points
 1.  France            71
 2.  Brazil            52
 3.  Switzerland       47
 4.  New Zealand       32
 5.  Great Britain     30
 6.  Portugal          27
 7.  Australia         26
 8.  Netherlands       26
 9.  Ireland           23
10.  Malaysia          23
11.  Canada            20
12.  Mexico            16
13.  Czech Republic     8
14.  Germany            8
15.  USA                8
16.  Japan              6
17.  South Africa       6
18.  Indonesia          5
19.  Italy              5
20.  Pakistan           4
21.  Austria            1