Di Grassi wins

The 23-year-old Brazilian only hit the front with ten laps to go when long-time leader Timo Glock made his scheduled pit-stop but never put a foot wrong as he broke the ART team's 13-month winless run.

Giorgio Pantano overtook Britain's Adam Carroll with six laps remaining to finish second, 1.371 seconds behind, while former championship leader Glock came home fourth and now trails di Grassi by four points.

From the lights it was Glock's iSport team-mate Andreas Zuber who shot into the lead from the second row as both the German and polesitter Luca Filippi both bogged down.

Filippi tried to wrest the lead back at turn nine but instead lost control of his Super Nova car and spun, stalling on the apex of the corner, forcing Bruno Senna to spin, Kazuki Nakajima to go off-track, and triggering the safety car.

That was most people's cue to make their mandatory pit-stop, but with their drivers lying first and second, iSport elected to leave Glock out while Zuber had his tyres changed.

The result was that the German led as the race resumed with the Minardi-Piquet cars of Xandi Negrao and Roldan Rodriguez and debutant Ricardo Risatti ahead of Zuber.

Di Grassi, at this stage, was seventh, but he scythed inside Carroll for sixth at turn nine and then made it by Risatti, following Zuber through as the Austrian forced the Trident driver wide at the exit of turn two.

Despite effectively holding the lead, Zuber was in no mood to sit behind Rodriguez, and impatience got the better of him entering turn nine on the 21st lap as he pulled out of the Spaniards slipstream too sharply and went across the grass.

The moment caused him to go straight on at the corner, leaving him beached in the gravel and out of a race he should have won easily.

That effectively handed the race to di Grassi, who inherited the lead when the top three all made their stops between laps 26 and 29.

Glock, who had built up an 18-second lead by the time of his stop, dropped to fourth after his tyre change, exiting the pits just ahead of Borja Garcia's Durango entry.

The action was not done though. Campos driver Pantano, who had been slow in the early stages, tried unsuccessfully to pass Carroll's FMS car in the final complex on lap 32 but made it around the outside of him at turn one next time round to take second.

Carroll held onto third, resisting a last-corner move by Glock, who was on rubber with 25 laps less wear on them, but the German did set the fastest lap, limiting the points lost to di Grassi.

Garcia came home fifth with DAMS driver Nakajima recovering from his early off-track moment to finish sixth ahead of Negrao, who took his best finish of the year in seventh.

Indian Karun Chandhok completed the points in eighth, giving him pole for Sunday's sprint race, while China's Ho-Pin Tung (BCN) and Bruno Senna (Arden) rounded out the top ten, recovering from his lap one spin.

Mike Conway had a terrible race. The Brit banged wheels with Andy Soucek at the first corner of the race, sending him into a half-spin.

As he tried to gather up the wayward Super Nova car he clouted Adrian Zaugg's Arden machine, almost flipping the South African in an accident that eliminated both and forced Chandhok to take avoiding action.