Petrov inherits victory in Valencia

Vitaly Petrov won Saturday's GP2 Series feature race in bizarre circumstances at Valencia when series leader Giorgio Pantano, who dominated the event, ran out of fuel in the final corners of the race.

Amazingly, title rival Bruno Senna also ran out of gas and coasted over the finish line in ninth place - just missing out on reverse grid pole for Sunday's sprint.

Before the race, teams acknowledged that the new Valancia street track was high on fuel consumption, and most cars completed the bare minimum of installation laps and were topped up with fuel on the grid, but they believed the situation would be offset by multiple safety cars.

However, only one safety car was required, when Ho-Pin Tung and Kamui Kobayashi hit the wall exiting Turn 2 on the opening lap, and it was only on track for a lap.

Pantano had led from the start of the 34-lap event but his Racing Engineering machine began to splutter as it approached the hairpin on the final lap. Petrov jumped ahead of him, and just beat Pastor Maldonado to the finish line by less than a second.

Romain Grosjean finished third, four seconds back, while Lucas di Grassi had a huge fright when he came across coasting cars in the flat-out final sequence of bends, but bounced across the kerbs to miss them and jumped up to fourth as a result.

The points finishers were completed by Jerome d'Ambrosio, Sebastien Buemi, Andy Soucek and Luca Filippi. Senna coasted across the line ninth, while Pantano could only make it to the final corner, where he stopped.

Others to run out of fuel included Karun Chandhok and Carlos Iaconalli.

Pos Driver Team Time 1. Petrov Barwa Campos Team 1h03:25.719 2. Maldonado Piquet Sports + 0.868 3. Grosjean ART Grand Prix + 4.447 4. Di Grassi Barwa Campos Team + 28.038 5. D'ambrosio Dams + 28.736 6. Buemi Trust Team Arden + 28.855 7. Soucek Super Nova Racing + 36.960 8. Filippi Trust Team Arden + 45.390 9. Senna iSport International + 48.177 10. Nunes DPR + 56.935 11. Valles BCN Competicion + 59.149 12. Herck DPR + 63.604 13. Iaconelli BCN Competicion + 72.716 14. Pantano Racing Engineering + 1 lap 15. Chandhok iSport International + 1 lap 16. Parente Super Nova Racing + 2 laps Retirements: Driver Team Laps Valsecchi Durango 29 Zuber Piquet Sports 24 Yamamoto ART Grand Prix 9 Conway Trident Racing 1 Villa Racing Engineering 0 Rodriguez FMS International 0 Tung Trident Racing 0 Valerio Durango 0 Kobayashi Dams 0 Asmer FMS International 0 Fastest lap: Pantano, 1:46.791 on lap 33