Russian Time's Artem Markelov scored his first GP2 win in Friday's chaotic feature race on the streets of Monte Carlo.
The Russian started 15th on the grid after crashing in qualifying yesterday, but found himself in contention for the lead of the race after managing his soft tyres to stay competitive after 30 laps on the rubber.
A late Virtual Safety Car for Luca Ghiotto's stranded car at Mirabeau afforded Markelov the unlikely opportunity to stretch his lead, and he gained nearly 30 seconds on long-time race leader Norman Nato under the VSC, making his win seem under threat from a stewards' enquiry.
Nato made a great start from second on the grid, powering past pole man Sergey Sirotkin, who was slow off the line.
Sirotkin chased Nato for the lead of the race, only to make a costly error on Lap 23, clouting the wall at Piscine, and bringing out the second VSC of the day – the first prompted by a clash between Pierre Gasly and Jimmy Eriksson.
The next VSC was caused by Eriksson's team mate Nabil Jeffri, who hit the wall at Rascasse around halfway into the race.
A poor pit stop for Nato at his mandatory tyre change left him in the clutches of Oliver Rowland in a net-second place, but the pair would not get to dice for long, owing to debris from Ghiotto's car, resulting in another VSC.
The green flags flew for two laps, but the VSC returned when Ghiotto stopped on-track.
With Markelov 20 seconds down the road and yet to make a pit stop, it looked like a two-way shootout for the win for Nato and Rowland, but when Markelov pitted as the track went green again, he emerged in the lead.
With so many yellow flags and incidents the race was restricted to 40 laps rather than 42 due to time constraints, not allowing Nato or Rowland the opportunity to attack Markelov on-track, and the result is under investigation.
Alex Lynn, Mitch Evans, Raffaele Marciello, Antonio Giovinazzi, reverse-grid polesitter Marvin Kirchhofer, Nobuharu Matsushita and Daniel de Jong completed the top 10.
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