Felipe Nasr closed the gap on points leader Jolyon Palmer with his fourth GP2 Series victory of the season at Spa-Francorchamps on Sunday morning.
Having grabbed the lead at the first corner, Carlin racer Nasr won the Sprint race by five seconds from Johnny Cecotto Jr, who passed Palmer’s DAMS car for second on lap two and took the fight to Nasr thereafter.
Trident’s Cecotto got to within 0.6s of Nasr, but was never quite close enough to attempt a pass, and dropped well back in the closing stages as Nasr secured the bonus point for fastest lap.
Behind Palmer, Mitch Evans took fourth place right at the end for Russian Time when Hilmer’s poleman Daniel Abt suffered a technical issue at Raidillon that handed him the position.
Stoffel Vandoorne finished sixth for ART, ahead of a charging Stefano Coletti, who came through to finish seventh from 24th on the grid.
His Racing Engineering team-mate Raffaele Marciello, who won yesterday, spun on the opening lap and could only recover to 14th.
Palmer still leads the standings, but by the reduced margin of 32 points over Nasr.
Results - 18 laps:
Pos Driver Team Time/Gap
1. Felipe Nasr Carlin 36m14.575s
2. Johnny Cecotto Jr Trident +5.157s
3. Jolyon Palmer DAMS +7.157s
4. Mitch Evans Russian Time +7.598s
5. Daniel Abt Hilmer +10.019s
6. Stoffel Vandoorne ART +10.648s
7. Stefano Coletti Racing Engineering +14.038s
8. Andre Negrao Arden +20.391s
9. Tom Dillmann Caterham +21.675s
10. Julian Leal Carlin +22.486s
11. Marco Sorensen MP +26.510s
12. Stephane Richelmi DAMS +28.491s
13. Daniel de Jong MP +29.790s
14. Raffaele Marciello Racing Engineering +36.284s
15. Nathanael Berthon Lazarus +40.238s
16. Rio Haryanto Caterham +51.786s
17. Simon Trummer Rapax +54.342s
18. Kimiya Sato Campos +54.604s
19. Conor Daly Lazarus +54.874s
20. Arthur Pic Campos +55.574s
21. Adrian Quaife-Hobbs Rapax +59.175s
22. Takuya Izawa ART +59.423s
23. Rene Binder Arden +1m16.668s
Retirements
Sergio Canamasas Trident 13 laps
Artem Markelov Russian Time 7 laps
Jon Lancaster Hilmer 3 laps
