After only one lap, the race was stopped because of Johnny Cecotto's car stalling on the grid. At the restart, it was the championship runner-up Vitaly Petrov who failed to get his Barwa-prepared car started, which eventually led to a massive accident. Romanian driver Michael Herck failed to see Petrov's stalled car and ran into its rear at full speed, as his car was itself projected into the wall after the impact.
While the track was all covered by debris, Herck needed the medical team to get out of the car, while Petrov walked out of his machinery with only minor injuries.
The safety car was soon deployed, with Andreas Zuber leading from Davide Valsecchi and Kamui Kobayashi. Zuber's rush to get a head start in the race made him lose a perfect opportunity for a race win, as he changed gears too soon and powered past the safety car while it was still on the track.
What was to make the race more chaotic was the fact that 5 other drivers folowed Zuber past the safety car – Valsecchi, Kobayashi, di Grassi, Hulkenberg and Maldonado – which meant drivethrough penalties for each of them in the following laps.
That gave Luca Filippi enough time to get into 1st place and secure enough of a lead to clinch his first win of the season, while followed by Sergio Perez and Javier Villa. Later on, Perez was also handed a 25-second penalty for overtaking the safety car and dropped to 11th overall, giving Super Nova their first 1-2 finish this season. Third placed was Dani Clos, of Racing Engineering.
Due to this turn of events, Super Nova managed to get past Racing Engineering in the teams' standings and finish the series in the runner-up spot.
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