Andy Soucek and Jerome d'Ambrosio collided at turn one, the returnee being stranded in the middle of the track, while Andreas Zuber and Yelmer Buurman came together a little further around the course, taking the innocent Adrian Valles with them. To compound another difficult sprint race for Piquet Sports, Pastor Maldonado was also out, while Ho Pin Tung never made it off the grid.
It took four laps to rescue the various stranded machines, but Petrov remained focused and led away at the restart. In his wake, Buemi headed Villa, Grosjean, race one winner Pantano and Mike Conway, while Karun Chandhok had to defend robustly to keep Roldan Rodriguez out of seventh, the pair actually touching into turn one.
Grosjean wasted little time in making up ground on the frontrunners, slicing past Villa on lap five and taking just two more tours to account for Buemi. Pantano, too, was on the move, demoting Racing Engineering team-mate Villa another place on lap six, with Conway also getting past the Spaniard on lap nine. Having almost pushed Rodriguez into the pit-wall on lap eight, Chandhok's efforts to follow Conway past Villa resulted in the Indian spinning, and Villa followed his aggressor down the order with an error of his own on dirty tyres at the final corner. The mistakes promoted Senna, who had started 15th, to sixth and the Brazilian was flying, swapping the fastest lap bonus with Grosjean.
The Frenchman's progress was complete when he finally managed to make a move on Petrov stick at turn twelve, but there was some confusion as to whether the pass had come under yellow flags, for Senna had collected his unwanted passenger not long before and was hobbling back to the pits on three wheels. No penalty followed, however, and the matter was confined to discussion ahead of the podium celebrations.
![Romain Grosjean - ART Grand Prix [pic credit: GP2 Series]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/438573.jpg)
