Silverstone GP2: Gasly ends losing streak with feature race win

The Frenchman's first win in any category since his last Formula Renault 2.0 win in 2013 came as a result of picking the optimum tyre strategy - option/prime - where the majority of the frontrunners went for the exact opposite.

It was Norman Nato who led for most of the way, the Racing Engineering man building a cushion up front after a flying start from pole, while Gasly, who started second, quickly dropped back into the pack on his option tyres.

Gasly, along with Oliver Rowland, Antonio Giovinazzi and others, therefore chose to pit early, but quickly began to make up lost ground to the leaders on primes.

Nato at this stage led from teammate Jordan King, Nicholas Latifi, Raffaele Marciello and Mitch Evans, his advantage out front generally hovering around the two second mark.

But the gap between Nato and Gasly, who made light work of the slower prime-shod cars, plummeted to just 13 seconds by the time the former came into the pits on Lap 21.

Gasly therefore found himself with a handsome advantage of six seconds over Rowland when Artem Markelov, the last man to make a stop, finally came in for options, and the Prema driver duly reeled off the remaining laps to finally seal a maiden GP2 win on his 37th attempt.

Rowland lost out in the battle for second to Giovinazzi, who bagged the runner-up spot after executing a superb outside pass on the Briton at Luffield to make it a Prema 1-2.

Behind Rowland, Evans - the quickest man in the closing stages and the best of those to start on primes - made his way up to fourth ahead of Luca Ghiotto (up from P21 on the grid) and Nobuharu Matsushita.

Nato, who had been passed by Evans some lap before, ran out of laps to clear Ghiotto and Matsushita and had to settle for seventh place, followed by King - who suffered from a slow pitstop - Marciello and Markelov.

Latifi finished just outside the points in 11th, but his DAMS teammate Alex Lynn suffered a race to forget as he was forced off the road at the start as he avoided a collision between Sean Gelael and Gustav Malja. The Briton ended up 16th.

Sergey Sirotkin also had a dismal time starting from the pitlane, suffering a puncture early on and eventually finishing down in 18th.

Race results:

Cla	Driver	Team	Laps	Time	Gap
1	Pierre Gasly	Prema Powerteam	29	51'39.383
2	Antonio Giovinazzi	Prema Powerteam	29	51'48.805	9.422
3	Oliver Rowland	MP Motorsport	29	51'50.473	11.090
4	Mitch Evans	Campos Racing	29	52'01.050	21.667
5	Luca Ghiotto	Trident	29	52'03.974	24.591
6	Nobuharu Matsushita	ART Grand Prix	29	52'04.548	25.165
7	Norman Nato	Racing Engineering	29	52'04.857	25.474
8	Jordan King	Racing Engineering	29	52'05.034	25.651
9	Raffaele Marciello	RUSSIAN TIME	29	52'11.140	31.757
10	Artem Markelov	RUSSIAN TIME	29	52'12.498	33.115
11	Nicholas Latifi	DAMS	29	52'13.603	34.220
12	Marvin Kirchhofer	Carlin	29	52'13.792	34.409
13	Sergio Canamasas	Carlin	29	52'17.281	37.898
14	Arthur Pic	Rapax	29	52'21.993	42.610
15	Jimmy Eriksson	Arden International	29	52'34.588	55.205
16	Alex Lynn	DAMS	29	52'35.987	56.604
17	Nabil Jeffri	Arden International	29	52'36.873	57.490
18	Sergey Sirotkin	ART Grand Prix	29	52'41.479	1'02.096
19	Daniel de Jong	MP Motorsport	29	53'03.044	1'23.661
20	Philo Paz Armand	Trident	29	53'19.147	1'39.764
21	Sean Gelael	Campos Racing	28	52'39.053	1 Lap
22	Gustav Malja	Rapax	28	53'20.967	1 Lap