Sepang GP2: Giovinazzi takes points lead with win, Gasly fails to score

After two extra formation laps to clear the stopped car of Artem Markelov, the race had a dramatic start as pole-sitter Gasly had a poor getaway.

The Frenchman was only 10th after Lap 1 and could not recover with an early-pitting strategy to end up only 11th.

Raffaele Marciello, starting right behind the Frenchman, immediately jumped into the lead with Giovinazzi going on the outside of him at Turn 1.

While Giovinazzi looked set to slot behind Marciello before the following left turn, the latter went wide and lost the lead.

He tried to fight back at Turn 4 by going alongside Giovinazzi until the following corner but he couldn't retake the lead and was instead passed by Sergey Sirotkin as well.

Sirotkin stayed within six tenths for the first four laps but slowly started to lose time as the end of his medium tyre stint came to an end.

He switched tyres on Lap 8 and on fresher rubber the Russian had significantly better pace than Giovinazzi.

However, the Italian waited three laps before he opted to pit and could only rejoin behind Sirotkin as a result.

The gap between the duo stagnated around a second for most of the race but Giovinazzi was suddenly all over the Russian as the last three laps approached.

Sirotkin was forced to take a defensive line at the final corner and then took the inside at Turn 1 as well, forcing Giovinazzi to the outside.

However, Sirotkin's car had a massive twitch during the corner, allowing Giovinazzi to edge ahead.

Giovinazzi had massive pace advantage once he took the lead and crossed the line with a gap of 5.8s.

Sirotkin took second despite losing a lot of time to third-placed Norman Nato, who was up to the final podium position after Marciello had issues in the pits.

British duo Oliver Rowland and Alex Lynn also passed the Italian, the former pitting two laps earlier and getting ahead of the latter as a result.

However, Lynn was soon all over Rowland and passed him for fourth.

Rowland continued to lose positions during the last couple of laps and eventually dropped outside the top 10 with a late spin.

Jordan King took fifth from Marciello with Luca Ghiotto and Mitch Evans, the two top drivers on the alternate strategy, securing the front row on the grid for tomorrow's sprint race.

Gustav Malja and Sergio Canamasas completed the top 10.

Following Giovinazzi's win, Prema took the Teams' Championship title, the Italian squad becoming champion in its first season in the series.

Race results

Cla	Driver	Team	Time
1	Antonio Giovinazzi	Prema Powerteam	52'18.049
2	Sergey Sirotkin	ART Grand Prix	5.8
3	Norman Nato	Racing Engineering	8.0
4	Alex Lynn	DAMS	16.2
5	Jordan King	Racing Engineering	18.7
6	Raffaele Marciello	RUSSIAN TIME	20.6
7	Luca Ghiotto	Trident	24.9
8	Mitch Evans	Campos Racing	28.5
9	Gustav Malja	Rapax	28.7
10	Sergio Canamasas	Carlin	33.2
11	Pierre Gasly	Prema Powerteam	35.5
12	Oliver Rowland	MP Motorsport	35.5
13	Johnny Cecotto	Rapax	35.7
14	Nicholas Latifi	DAMS	41.1
15	Marvin Kirchhofer	Carlin	41.2
16	Sean Gelael	Campos Racing	42.9
17	Daniel de Jong	MP Motorsport	47.2
18	Nabil Jeffri	Arden International	63.0
19	Philo Paz Armand	Trident	66.4
	Nobuharu Matsushita	ART Grand Prix	7 laps
	Artem Markelov	RUSSIAN TIME	29 laps