Tobias Hegewald continued his domination of the Formula 2 weekend at Spa by taking a comfortable victory in race one. The German had no trouble maintaining his pole advantage either at the start or the restart after an early safety car period, and cruised away to beat Andy Soucek by four seconds.
Soucek's lonely second place gave the former GP2 man the championship lead following a variety of problems for the Red Bull proteges that had previously headed the points.
Third-place qualifier Robert Wickens' car stuttered off the line and was collected by Jason Moore, ending their races immediately and prompting the safety car while their mangled machines were removed from the approach to La Source.
Pre-race championship leader Mirko Bortolotti could only get up to ninth after his poor qualifying session, while an early brush with Jens Hoing left Mikhail Aleshin -- who started last anyway after a practice crash - a lap down.
Fast-starter Milos Pavlovic fend off a race-long challenge from Julien Jousse to take the final podium spot.
Henry Surtees had been set for fifth in a car hurriedly repaired after a second qualifying accident that saw him collect Armaan Ebrahim's crashed machine, but the Briton slowed on the final lap. That allowed Jack Clarke and Tom Gladdis into the top six, with Henri Karjalainen and Edoardo Piscopo completing the scorers. This group had been shuffled by an early incident at Les Combes involving top ten contenders Jolyon Palmer, Alex Brundle and Philipp Eng.