ART GP driver Sergey Sirotkin overcame the disadvantage of having to pit twice in Saturday's feature race, re-gaining the lead of the race with five laps to go.
Sirotkin made an opportunistic pit stop from the lead early on in the race after a Virtual Safety Car for contact between Jordan King and Artem Markelov.
The Russian took on new tyres, but as the stop was made during the VSC period, it was not counted as his mandatory stop, and he had to complete another, which he made with eleven laps to go.
So great was the ART man's pace on the fresh rubber, that he negated race leader Raffaele Marciello's six-second advantage in just three laps, getting the move done in front of the huge crowds in the stadium at Sachskurve.
Sirotkin's fall and rise was not the only intriguing story of the race, as fellow front-row starter Pierre Gasly overcame his own adversity during the race.
The Prema racer, who currently leads the championship, had a woeful start, dropping down to twelfth position. He battled back through the field, and found himself fourth on the final lap, but took bottom step on te rostrum after getting better traction off the final corner than Marciello, pipping the Russian Time driver at the line by the narrowest of margins.
The race was one punctuated by incidents, with three Virtual Safety Car periods breaking up the racing. The final of these three was between Oliver Rowland and Nroman Nato, as the former tagged the latter, spinning him out of the race and landing himself a 10-second penalty.
Behind Sirotkin was rookie Luca Ghiotto, picking up only his second GP2 series podium in the process. Then came the resurgent Gasly, Marciello, Arthur Pic, Rowland, Gustav Malja, Antonio Giovinazzi, Nobuharu Matsushita, and Lynn.
Lynn finished eighth on the road and would have inherited reverse-grid pole for tomorrow's sprint race, but his ten-second penalty for hitting Nato demoted him to tenth, giving Giovinazzi pole for Sunday's event.
Sirotkin took full honours, taking Pole yesterday, and fastest lap and the win during the race. This massive haul of 31 points means he moves from eighth to second in the standings, 21 points behind Prema's Pierre Gasly.
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