Luca Filippi won a thrilling second GP2 race of the weekend at Spa. The Italian worked his way from fifth to second in the opening six laps, picking off Dani Clos, Fairuz Fauzy and the fast-starting (11th to second) Johnny Cecotto Jr with moves at Les Combes.
He was making inroads into Josef Kral's lead when the safety car came out, after Fabio Leimer (Rapax) had a serious crash at Eau Rouge.
Filippi (Coloni) then passed Arden driver Kral at Les Combes after the restart, and from there he was able to pull away while the rest of the field went into battle behind him.
Romain Grosjean, Dani Clos and Jules Bianchi picked off Fauzy's Super Nova car when the Malaysian went wide after attacking Cecotto (Ocean) at Les Combes.
As Cecotto fought to keep DAMS' Grosjean at bay, that allowed Clos (Racing Engineering) and Bianchi (ART) to challenge. Clos got past the new champion out of La Source, while Bianchi got a run on both to pull off a stunning three-abreast pass into Eau Rouge. From there, Bianchi picked off Cecotto, before passing Kral for second on the penultimate lap.
Cecotto slipped out of contention in the closing laps, while Grosjean got back ahead of Clos and held on to fourth to the end.
The Spaniard had to look in his mirrors from there, as Sam Bird was completing a charge from 12th on the grid for iSport. The Briton passed Clos with three laps to go, to keep himself in contention in a five-way fight for the runner-up spot in the title race.