Barcelona GP2: Nato gets maiden win, Sirotkin spins

In his first race for Racing Engineering, Nato ran second behind polesitter Pierre Gasly for much of the race as the Red Bull junior held the lead through the first sequence of turns.

The Virtual Safety Car was called out on the second lap as Luca Ghiotto's Trident car went in the barriers on the outside of Turn 3, Gasly extending his cushion over Nato until an actual Safety Car was called some laps later.

Gasly held off the advances of Nato when the action resumed, with Sirotkin having made a good start from fifth to sit third behind the French duo.

The front three men held station for a number of laps, Gasly's lead hovering around the one-second mark for much of the time, as Sirotkin put Nato under increasing pressure for second.

However, the Russian driver, while following closely in Nato's wheeltracks through Turns 1 and 2 on the 24th laps, spun out exiting the second corner and came to a halt in the middle of the track.

That brought out the Safety Car once again, at which point Gasly, Nato and the rest of the lead runners all headed to the pits to swap their hard compound tyres for softs.

Nato put Gasly under immediate pressure on the restart, and drew close enough to dive up the inside going into Turn 10 and grab the lead, immediately pulling away with the fastest lap next time round.

From there, Nato was able to control the gap to his pursuers and bring home his Racing Engineering car 1.3s clear to win, as the race time limit ensured only 33 of the scheduled 37 laps were completed.

Nicholas Latifi, third at the restart after Sirotkin's spin, grabbed second from Gasly going into Turn 1, with the Prema driver forced to settle for third.

Fourth was Artem Markelov, who passed Sergio Canamasas after the restart to take the place, ahead of Alex Lynn, the first of those to start on softs and make an early switch to hard tyres.

Jordan King took seventh in Racing Engineering's second entry, following the same strategy as Lynn.

Raffaele Marciello was classified in eighth despite ending up in the gravel courtesy of a punt from debutant Antonio Giovinazzi, provisionally able to keep his points thanks to the chequered flag being waved a lap early.

Race results

Pos.	Driver	Team	Time/Gap
1	Norman Nato	Racing Engineering	58:51.044
2	Nicholas Latifi	DAMS	1.337
3	Pierre Gasly	Prema Racing	4.248
4	Artem Markelov	Russian Time	5.145
5	Sergio Canamasas	Carlin	7.294
6	Alex Lynn	DAMS	7.596
7	Jordan King	Racing Engineering	8.678
8	Raffaele Marciello	Russian Time	11.544
9	Gustav Malja	Rapax	13.102
10	Oliver Rowland	MP Motorsport	17.513
11	Nobuharu Matsushita	ART Grand Prix	18.526
12	Mitch Evans	Pertamina Campos Racing	21.773
13	Arthur Pic	Rapax	23.022
14	Daniel de Jong	MP Motorsport	23.787
15	Marvin Kirchhofer	Carlin	24.125
16	Jimmy Eriksson	Arden International	24.348
17	Sean Gelael	Pertamina Campos Racing	27.522
18	Antonio Giovinazzi*	Prema Racing	32.156
19	Nabil Jeffri	Arden International	1 Lap
Ret	Philo Paz Armand	Trident
Ret	Sergey Sirotkin	ART Grand Prix
Ret	Luca Ghiotto	Trident

*Giovinazzi received a post-race 20-second penalty for causing a collision with Marciello.