Timo Glock took the lead of the GP2 championship back off Lucas di Grassi with an untroubled win the sprint race at Istanbul.

Having won yesterday’s feature race di Grassi failed to score after picking up a drive-through penalty in the sprint event.

Karun Chandhok kept the lead from pole position at the start of the race with Kazuki Nakajima behind him. Alexandre Negrao took up third place with Glock passing Borja Garcia for fourth on the opening lap.

Further back Henri Karjalainen spun out at the first corner and Kohei Hirate tagged Mike Conway, the contact putting both drivers out.

Glock quickly picked off Negrao and reeled in the leaders. Nakajima was clearly able to brake much later than Chandhok entering the final three-bend complex, and had a look at passing the Durango driver at the final turn.

He thought better of it the first time but on lap 12 committed himself to a lunge at Chandhok. He succeeded only in taking Chandhok out and letting Glock - who had wisely hung back - through into the lead. Nakajima was given a drive through penalty and later retired.

He was not the only driver being called into the pits. Di Grassi had taken sixth place off Adam Carroll, then lost the place again, before being summoned in for avoidable contact. It was a controversial decision that potentially has ramification for the championship.

Glock easily stretched his lead to ten seconds over Negrao by the flag. Carroll passed Garcia on lap 14 and ran out of time to catch Negrao. Garcia clung onto fourth ahead of Vitaly Petrov who passed Bruno Senna for fifth.

The result puts Glock back into the lead of the championship with 66 points, two more than di Grassi, with six races remaining.

Photo: GP2 Media Service / Andrew Ferraro