Austrian Grand Prix

Cecotto wins thrilling sprint race

22-06-2014

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Johnny Cecotto Jr won round eight of the GP2 Series at the Red Bull Ring on Sunday morning, holding off Stefano Coletti by 0.742s in a thrilling race.

Trident racer Cecotto leapt into the lead from the second row at the start as poleman Alexander Rossi (Caterham) and fellow front-row man Mitch Evans (Russian Time) made awful getaways.

Cecotto's first rival for victory was Rossi, who hounded him over the opening five laps. But Rossi fell back into the clutches of a charging Raffaele Marciello, who had ended the opening lap in fourth but battled past Racing Engineering team-mate Coletti at Turn 3 on lap two.

Marciello then passed Rossi for second at Turn 2 on lap seven, and closed right up to leader Cecotto. Despite harrying him for several laps, Marciello's tyres went off, and he fell back.

Coletti, meanwhile, passed Rossi for third around the outside of Turn 3 on lap 17, and then repassed Marciello for second two laps later.

Cecotto's three-second lead quickly evaporated as Coletti slashed the gap, but he just could not find a way past.

"Not enough laps, I tried," said Coletti on his in-lap.

Marciello clung to third, despite a couple of ambitious lunges from Evans in the closing stages. Rossi finished fifth.

It was Cecotto's second win of the season and puts him third in the points race. Series leader Jolyon Palmer, who finished sixth, extended his lead over Felipe Nasr to 33 points. Nasr was an early retirement with a clutch problem.

Carlin's Julian Leal was seventh, after being shoved into the Turn 2 run-off by Palmer on lap 20 after they'had swapped positions a number of times. Takuya Izawa rounded out the point scorers.