Pastor Maldonado has extended his series lead with yet another crushing display to take his fifth victory of the season, claiming the lead following a string of start problems for his rivals to easily lead home Christian Vietoris and Sergio Perez in this afternoon’s feature race in Budapest.

The Venezuelan’s job was made easy by the removal of the front row before the start, with Davide Valsecchi stalling off the line for the formation lap, Adrian Zaugg causing another tour when he stalled, and then finally polesitter Sam Bird’s engine stopped ahead of the third attempt at a start.

When the lights went out Oliver Turvey bogged down, handing Maldonado an easy lead ahead of Vietoris, Perez, Giedo van der Garde and Turvey, but behind then was chaos as Jules Bianchi caught Giacomo Ricci’s rear and spun back into the traffic: Ho-Pin Tung had nowhere to go and they hit nose to nose, with Rodolfo Gonzalez into the back of them. The red flag was out almost immediately.

There was no drama at the safety car restart, nor when it came in a lap later, and it was clear that pit strategies would be the telling factor: Jerome d’Ambrosio came in early from P8 to get some clear air, as did Perez from P3, giving Maldonado the peace to pit at his leisure, losing the lead only to some stragglers for 2 laps until everyone had come in.

With the gap out to 10 seconds the only chance his rivals had was another safety car, which duly arrived on lap 24 Alberto Valerio’s battle with Luiz Razia spilled over into a brawl, hurling the Brazilian over his rival’s tyres and into the wall: Vladimir Arabadzhiev was out of position between Maldonado and Vietoris at the restart, and held up the field for long enough to give the series leader an easy run to the first turn.

And when the chequered flag Maldonado was almost six seconds to the good over Vietoris, who had to hold a clearly desperate Perez at bay for his best result of the season, while Turvey snuck into fourth just before the second safety car when van der Garde ran wide. D’Ambrosio held on for sixth place, leading a train of DPR drivers Michael Herck and Giacomo Ricci, with the latter just holding off countryman Valsecchi for tomorrow’s pole position.

The Venezuelan’s lead in the series is now out to 26 points: Maldonado leads Perez by 77 points to 51, with Dani Clos on 43 and Bianchi on 39. Perez would seem to be the only man able to close down the series leader points score in tomorrow’s sprint race.

POS NO DRIVERS TEAMS LAPS TIME GAP INT. KPH BEST LAP1 15 P. MALDONADO Rapax 37 1:18:45.734   123.452 1:30.767 21 2 8 C. VIETORIS Racing Engineering 37 1:18:51.599 5.865  123.299 1:30.869 15 3 4 S. PEREZ Barwa Addax Team 37 1:18:52.245 6.511 0.646 123.282 1:30.924 6 4 9 O. TURVEY iSport International 37 1:18:52.843 7.109 0.598 123.267 1:30.903 23 5 3 G. VAN DER GARDE Barwa Addax Team 37 1:18:55.959 10.225 3.116 123.186 1:31.199 19 6 11 J. D'AMBROSIO Dams 37 1:18:57.778 12.044 1.819 123.138 1:31.197 21 7 26 M. HERCK DPR 37 1:18:58.221 12.487 0.443 123.127 1:31.191 8 8 27 G. RICCI DPR 37 1:18:58.675 12.941 0.454 123.115 1:31.230 18 9 10 D. VALSECCHI iSport International 37 1:18:59.272 13.538 0.597 123.100 1:30.870 22 10 14 L. RAZIA Rapax 37 1:19:00.115 14.381 0.843 123.078 1:31.682 10 11 16 C. PIC Arden International 37 1:19:04.374 18.640 4.259 122.967 1:31.163 8 12 6 M. ERICSSON Super Nova Racing 37 1:19:07.439 21.705 3.065 122.888 1:31.516 9 13 2 S. BIRD ART Grand Prix 37 1:19:11.078 25.344 3.639 122.794 1:31.418 9 14 5 L. FILIPPI Super Nova Racing 37 1:19:13.794 28.060 2.716 122.724 1:32.194 9 15 25 A. ZAUGG Trident Racing 37 1:19:15.450 29.716 1.656 122.681 1:32.136 12 16 7 D. CLOS Racing Engineering 37 1:19:16.232 30.498 0.782 122.661 1:31.182 8 17 18 M. CHILTON Ocean Racing Technology 37 1:19:17.888 32.154 1.656 122.618 1:32.274 20 18 21 V. ARABADZHIEV Scuderia Coloni 36 1:19:13.897 1 LAP 1 LAP 119.403 1:32.034 9 NC 20 A. VALERIO Scuderia Coloni 24 57:57.797 DNF  108.797 1:31.816 17 NC 19 F. LEIMER Ocean Racing Technology 14 43:19.538 DNF  84.883 1:31.738 8 NC 24 J. CECOTTO Trident Racing 9 34:25.089 DNF  68.665 1:32.864 7 NC 1 J. BIANCHI ART Grand Prix 0  DNF     NC 12 H. TUNG Dams 0  DNF     NC 17 R. GONZALEZ Arden International 0  DNF