Kamui Kobayashi claimed the first win for a Japanese driver in GP2 after coming out on top of the sprint race at round three of the GP2 Asia Series in Malaysia.
The DAMS driver had finished fifth in Saturday's feature, but vaulted straight to the front from the outside of row two, closely followed by race one winner Vitaly Petrov, the Russian coming from eighth, while the front row pairing of Harald Schlegelmilch and Milos Pavlovic struggled to hold off championship leader Romain Grosjean, who had come from ninth after missing the points on Saturday.
The Frenchman made short work of the obstacles in his way to latch on to the rear of Petrov's Campos car with a matter of laps, the pressure on the Russian allowing Kobayashi to pull out a six-second advantage, while the rest of the pack stayed closely matched, with Marcelo Puglisi, Yelmer Buurman and Davide Valsecchi holding the early points places.
While Kobayashi continued to pull away at the front, Petrov and Grosjean enjoyed a tantalising battle until lap the end of lap eleven, when the ART Grand Prix driver suckered his rival into running too deep into the final hairpin, slipping underneath the Russian to assume second spot.
Although he was then able to open a gap back to the Campos car, however, Grosjean was unable to close down the six-second gap to Kobayashi, but second place after the disappointment of Saturday was a welcome result.
I played it really safe at the start and, then, the cars in front of me were slower, so I could overtake them - all in all, I passed seven cars," the Frenchman reported, "The fight with Petrov was tough, as he was faster than me when outing the corners, but he eventually made a mistake and I went on the outside to overtake him. After that, Kamui was too far away. I wanted to win, but I guess I should focus on the fact that Im still leading the championship. I made a mistake yesterday that cost us the win
![Kamui Kobayashi - DAMS [pic credit: GP2 Series]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/419632.jpg)
