Race report

FIA F2 Sepang

Sepang GP2: Ghiotto victorious, Gasly beats Giovinazzi to podium finish

Rookie Luca Ghiotto scored his maiden GP2 victory in the sprint race at Sepang as title contenders Pierre Gasly and Antonio Giovinazzi recovered to third and fourth respectively.

David Gruz

Edited: Oct 2, 2016, 7:15 AM

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Luca Ghiotto, Trident

Ghiotto had a better getaway than pole-sitter Mitch Evans to take the lead from the Campos driver following the opening sequence of corners.

The safety car was out on Lap 2 after a collision between Racing Engineering duo Norman Nato and Jordan King.

The Frenchman just passed his teammate for fourth at Turn 1 but ended up being spun out by King a corner later, which left his car stranded.

While Ghiotto had a good restart, Evans lost another spot to Raffaele Marciello.

Ghiotto maintained a lead bigger than a second for most of the race and, despite a late charge from Marciello, he took the checkered flag first.

Further behind, neither Antonio Giovinazzi nor Pierre Gasly managed to gain significantly after the start as they were seventh and ninth behind the safety car respectively.

Gasly got right behind his teammate by passing Sergio Canamasas, the Prema duo then arriving to the back of Oliver Rowland, who was attacking King's damaged machinery.

Giovinazzi took the initiative by attempting to pass Rowland on the outside of Turn 4 but the Italian ended up going on the grass, nearly avoiding spinning out but falling behind Gasly.

Both Gasly and Giovinazzi then made quick work of passing King and Rowland to run in fifth and sixth with the Frenchman now ahead.

They managed to get ahead of the struggling Evans and Gustav Malja as well, the Swede running wide right in front of the Prema duo.

With just a handful of laps left, Giovinazzi started putting pressure on Gasly but as he was never close enough on the main straight, he didn't risk his fourth place.

Malja took his sixth consecutive pointscoring position in fifth followed by Evans, who finished narrowly ahead of Nobuharu Matsushita.

Rowland scored one point in eighth ahead of Johnny Cecotto and Nicholas Latifi.

Finishing right ahead, Gasly is now nine points behind Giovinazzi in the standings.

Marciello is third in the standings with a 39-point deficit as Sergey Sirotkin fell out of title contention after he retired in the pits with a gearbox problem.

Race results

ClaDriverTeamTime 1 Luca Ghiotto Trident - 2 Raffaele Marciello RUSSIAN TIME 0.6 3 Pierre Gasly Prema Powerteam 4.7 4 Antonio Giovinazzi Prema Powerteam 5.4 5 Gustav Malja Rapax 9.6 6 Mitch Evans Campos Racing 13.3 7 Nobuharu Matsushita ART Grand Prix 13.9 8 Oliver Rowland MP Motorsport 15.8 9 Johnny Cecotto Rapax 17.6 10 Nicholas Latifi DAMS 24.2 11 Marvin Kirchhofer Carlin 25.8 12 Alex Lynn DAMS 27.1 13 Artem Markelov RUSSIAN TIME 29.2 14 Jordan King Racing Engineering 72.4 15 Sergio Canamasas Carlin 86.3 Philo Paz Armand Trident 4 laps Nabil Jeffri Arden International 4 laps Sergey Sirotkin ART Grand Prix 9 laps Sean Gelael Campos Racing 15 laps Norman Nato Racing Engineering 21 laps Daniel de Jong MP Motorsport 22 laps

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