Luca Filippi celebrated his 100th start in the GP2 Series by winning at the Nurburgring on Saturday.
The category veteran, who switched to Coloni this weekend after being replaced at Super Nova by Adam Carroll, jumped early race leader Charles Pic during the pit stops and never looked back from there. The Addax driver hung onto the back of the Italian for a few laps, before Filippi settled down and pulled away to win by more than five seconds.
Pic couldn't relax too much behind him though, as championship leader Romain Grosjean was lurking throughout the final stint in third place.
Grosjean will be relatively happy considering that he extended his championship lead, as his closest challengers Giedo van der Garde and Sam Bird finished behind him. The DAMS drivers race didn't get off to the smoothest of starts though, as he lost out to Jules Bianchi on the opening lap and had to capitalize on a slow stop for the ART driver to get back into a podium place. Bianchi then came home a lonely fourth, while Marcus Ericsson pinched fifth from van der Garde on the penultimate lap.
The scrap for the front row of Sunday's reversed-grid race got particularly lively in the closing stages, as Alvaro Parente, Dani Clos and Sam Bird fought over positions seven to nine.
Parente held onto seventh when he cut the chicane on lap 28, and on the following lap Bird was able to snatch eighth from Clos at Turn 1. Clos re-took the race two pole at the same place a lap later, and both were promoted when Parente was given a drive through for not respecting the track limits.
From there the fight settled down, with Bird just having to keep an eye on Fabio Leimer who dropped out of the points during the pit stops for the last couple of laps to hang onto eighth.
Leimer could find himself in trouble with the stewards after the race, as he was placed under investigation for clashes with points contenders Adam Carroll and Luiz Razia as he made his way back through the field.