Hockenheim GP2: Lynn victorious, Sirotkin draws level with Gasly

Lynn led virtually from start-to-finish, holding off early advances from Oliver Rowland and never looking back as those behind him ran out of tyres.

Having been promoted to reverse-grid pole after his teammate Gasly's late-Saturday disqualification, Antonio Giovinazzi only led for mere moments after the lights went out in the sprint race.

The Italian suffered massive wheelspin off the line, with Lynn and Rowland breezing past - and while Giovinazzi did manage to hang on to third by forcing Arthur Pic off on corner entry, he'd later receive a time penalty for doing so.

With Lynn now leading the race, the Briton had to work hard to keep compatriot Rowland at bay early on, although the latter would soon have to focus on defending from Giovinazzi instead.

The VSC came out for the first time then as Nabil Jeffri forced Norman Nato over the kerbs at Turn 8, with an inevitable collision following.

At the restart, Rowland very nearly fell prey to Giovinazzi - and their battle eventually resulted in contact on approach to Turn 8, as Giovinazzi damaged his front wing against the Briton's car and came to a halt in the run-off.

That prompted a second VSC and further increased Lynn's lead - and, in the final green-flag stint, the Williams development driver had little trouble bringing the car home in first place.

Rowland, however, began to suffer massively with tyre degradation, coming under massive pressure from Sirotkin and eventually surrendering the spot.

On the penultimate lap, Rowland was then passed by Arthur Pic, who went on to claim his first podium for Rapax, and star rookie Luca Ghiotto.

However, the Briton just held off Pierre Gasly, the erstwhile championship leader producing a scintillating drive from P20 on the grid to P6 at the chequered flag.

Raffaele Marciello finished seventh, just ahead of teammate Artem Markelov, who decided to change tyres mid-race and was quickest of all in the final stint.

However, Markelov also landed a five-second penalty for speeding in the pits, giving up eighth to Gustav Malja as a result.

In the standings, Sirotkin and Gasly head the field with 113 points both, the Russian currently occupying the points lead on countback of third-place finishes.

Race results

Pos.	#	Driver	Team	Time
1	5	Alex Lynn	DAMS	-
2	2	Sergey Sirotkin	ART Grand Prix	2.9
3	12	Arthur Pic	Rapax	4.6
4	15	Luca Ghiotto	Trident	6.2
5	22	Oliver Rowland	MP Motorsport	8.1
6	21	Pierre Gasly	Prema Powerteam	8.4
7	9	Raffaele Marciello	RUSSIAN TIME	9.2
8	11	Gustav Malja	Rapax	10.2
9	10	Artem Markelov	RUSSIAN TIME	14.4
10	7	Mitch Evans	Campos Racing	15.1
11	4	Jordan King	Racing Engineering	16.7
12	1	Nobuharu Matsushita	ART Grand Prix	21.3
13	25	Jimmy Eriksson	Arden International	25.1
14	19	Marvin Kirchhofer	Carlin	25.2
15	18	Rene Binder	Carlin	25.7
16	23	Daniel de Jong	MP Motorsport	34.7
17	6	Nicholas Latifi	DAMS	41.6
18	3	Norman Nato	Racing Engineering	1 lap
	8	Sean Gelael	Campos Racing	3 laps
	14	Philo Paz Armand	Trident	5 laps
	20	Antonio Giovinazzi	Prema Powerteam	14 laps
	24	Nabil Jeffri	Arden International	21 laps