Premat gives France a clean-sweep

The French ace was always in control, leading from pole and then keeping Dutchman Jos Verstappen at bay after the pitstops.

After the lessons from the Indonesia race, when badly-timed stops cost the likes of Stephen Simpson and Robbie Kerr badly, the vast majority of the grid chose to pit early - at the end of lap two.

The only cars that didn't stop were Switzerland, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, the USA, Lebanon and China.

Neel Jani was the first of this sextet to stop, coming in on lap six. But any hopes of jumping Team France were dashed, Jani rejoining where he started - behind Premat.

The following lap Verstappen was in. The Dutch crew turned the car round in super-quick time and he raced out of the pitlane as France blasted down the pit straight.

It was close, but Premat was just ahead as Verstappen booted it back on to the circuit. The Dutchman tried to stay in touch, but on cold tyres the French driver was able to make a gap.

Tomas Enge's Czech Republic car and the USA's Bryan Herta both had slow stops, which meant their different choice of strategy failed to work out for either.

Once everything settled down after the stops, France led from the Netherlands, with Switzerland not far behind. Timo Scheider's German car had made great gains from eighth on the grid to lie fourth.

Enrico Toccacelo had dropped to fifth ahead of Matt Halliday, who had made heroic gains from 18th on the grid following his troubles with Hayanari Shimoda in the Sprint race.

The early pitstops had left the field strung out and the race became processional. But then on lap 21, Indonesia's Ananda Mikola made a botched job of passing Christian Jones at Turn 1 and knocked the Australian into a spin at Turn 2, bringing out the safety car.

Premat timed the restart perfectly as usual to stay ahead of Verstappen. He would lead the orange car all the way to the flag to complete his clean-sweep.

Britain's Kerr was the man on the move. He passed both Patrick Friesacher and Matt Halliday at Turn 5 with great late-braking moves. It was enough to give him sixth place behind Jani, Scheider and Toccacelo.

Halliday faded, probably as a consequence of his hastily-rebuilt car after the Sprint. Enge passed him for seventh, although Halliday held off Friesacher and Alvaro Parente in a spirited scrap.

The series resumes on March 12th at Laguna Seca in California, for the penultimate event of the season.

Feature race results:

Pos  Driver                Team            Time
 1.  Alexandre Premat      France          52:26.709
 2.  Jos Verstappen        Netherlands     +   0.780
 3.  Neel Jani             Switzerland     +   3.525
 4.  Timo Scheider         Germany         +   4.588
 5.  Enrico Toccacelo      Italy           +   4.994
 6.  Robbie Kerr           Great Britain   +  11.502
 7.  Tomas Enge            Czech Republic  +  14.840
 8.  Matt Halliday         New Zealand     +  18.828
 9.  Patrick Friesacher    Austria         +  19.140
10.  Alvaro Parente        Portugal        +  19.577
11.  Alex Yoong            Malaysia        +  23.000
12.  Christian Fittipaldi  Brazil          +  23.561
13.  Bryan Herta           Usa             +  23.876
14.  Graham Rahal          Lebanon         +  25.517
15.  Patrick Carpentier    Canada          +  1 Lap
16.  Ananda Mikola         Indonesia       +  1 Lap
17.  Tengyi Jiang          China           +  1 Lap
18.  Stephen Simpson       South Africa    +  1 Lap
19.  Christian Jones       Australia       + 16 Laps
20.  Ralph Firman          Ireland         + 20 Laps
21.  Salvador Duran        Mexico          + 30 Laps
22.  Hayanari Shimoda      Japan           DNS

Fastest lap: Alexandre Premat, 1:21.100 on lap 17

Championship standings:

 1.  France               153
 2.  Switzerland          121
 3.  Great Britain         73
 4.  Brazil                70
 5.  Netherlands           69
 6.  New Zealand           64
 7.  Malaysia              53
 8.  Portugal              51
 9.  Ireland               50
10.  Canada                44
11.  Czech Republic        41
12.  Italy                 40
13.  Australia             37
14.  Mexico                28
15.  Germany               25
16.  South Africa          20
17.  Usa                   20
18.  Austria               12
19.  Indonesia             10
20.  Japan                  8
21.  China                  6
22.  Pakistan               4