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

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

Cla	Driver	Team	Time
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