Timo Glock has regained the GP2 Series lead after scoring his third win of the season during the Istanbul Park sprint event, although it was a race that wasn't without its fair share of controversy.
Making up for the feature race in which Glock had the pace to win but was denied by a misjudged pit strategy in light of an impromptu safety car, the German was joined on the podium by Xandi Negrao, who recorded his best ever GP2 result in second, and Adam Carroll, who made it four podiums in four races.
Still, while Glock will see the first race as one he perhaps should have won in the right circumstances, he will likely accept that he was lucky to inherit victory in the sprint event after looking as though he would be settling for third place as the race entered the second-half.
At this point victory was being disputed by Karun Chandhok, who made the most of his pole position to lead for the first half of the race, albeit closely followed by
Kazuki Nakajima.
Pulling ahead from Glock, the battle between the two became frenetic before Nakajima finally put an end to it when he pushed the Indian into a spin at the final turn, one the Durango driver would not be able to recover from and would instead be forced into a bitterly disappointing retirement.
Unsurprisingly, Nakajima's actions failed to escape the attention of the race stewards, who duly slapped the Japanese driver with a drive-through penalty for creating an unnecessary accident.
With both of his rivals out of the way, Glock was promoted into the lead, where he would remain to the finish, collecting six important points and re-establishing his authority on the lead of the GP2 standings when erstwhile leader – and feature race winner – Lucas di Grassi also felt the wrath of the stewards.
di Grassi was punished with a drive-through for his move on Giorgio Pantano that also resulted in the Italian spinning, although he would get going again to finish down 12th position, one place behind the Brazilian.
