Pic heads Addax one-two finish

The Frenchman ran third early on as van der Garde led from pole with Sam Bird (iSport) close behind. But Pic got the jump on both of those ahead of him in the pitstops, where he came in one lap after Bird and one lap before his team-mate, and changed only two tyres while his rivals swapped all four.

Van der Garde was also slow away from his stop, and that proved to be the difference as Pic only just beat him to the apex of Turn 1.

From there, Pic had the race under control, and even a late-race safety car did not give van der Garde a chance to attack.

Bird took the final step on the podium behind the Addax cars, while DAMS' Romain Grosjean came home fourth after a very quiet race where he never quite had enough to match the top three.

Davide Valsecchi (AirAsia) took advantage of being one of the first leaders to pit to retake fifth place, which he had lost at the start when he made a very slow getaway and dropped to eighth.

Marcus Ericsson and Dani Clos were next up. The pair had disputed their position when the safety car was called out on the opening lap, and as Clos tried to let Ericsson through just before the restart it allowed the top four to pull away by four seconds.

The Spaniard eventually let Ericsson through a lap later, and he was never able to regain the position from there.

ART's Jules Bianchi recovered from his 10-place grid penalty to climb from 11th to eighth, earning the final point and pole position for Sunday's reversed-grid race.

The Frenchman spent a long time in the midfield after he lost ground avoiding a startline crash between Luiz Razia and Luca Filippi, but he put moves on Michael Herck and Stefano Coletti at Turn 1 late in the race to grab eighth.

Results - 34 laps:

Pos  Driver               Team                    Time/Gap
 1.  Charles Pic          Addax               1h00m32.817s
 2.  Giedo van der Garde  Addax                   + 1.444s
 3.  Sam Bird             iSport                  + 2.773s
 4.  Romain Grosjean      DAMS                    + 7.958s
 5.  Davide Valsecchi     AirAsia                + 10.011s
 6.  Marcus Ericsson      iSport                 + 10.518s
 7.  Dani Clos            Racing Engineering     + 16.534s
 8.  Jules Bianchi        ART                    + 16.979s
 9.  Fabio Leimer         Rapax                  + 17.419s
10.  Josef Kral           Arden                  + 21.726s
11.  Stefano Coletti      Trident                + 24.492s
12.  Alvaro Parente       Racing Engineering     + 24.715s
13.  Max Chilton          Carlin                 + 25.349s
14.  Fairuz Fauzy         Super Nova             + 25.841s
15.  Johnny Cecotto       Ocean                  + 28.469s
16.  Pal Varhaug          DAMS                   + 35.890s
17.  Mikhail Aleshin      Carlin                 + 37.837s
18.  Julian Leal          Rapax                  + 38.135s
19.  Jolyon Palmer        Arden                  + 38.723s
20.  Kevin Ceccon         Coloni                 + 39.033s
21.  Rodolfo Gonzalez     Trident                + 41.999s
22.  Kevin Mirocha        Ocean                    + 1 lap

Retirements:

     Michael Herck        Coloni                   21 laps
     Esteban Gutierrez    ART                      21 laps
     Luiz Razia           AirAsia                  11 laps
     Luca Filippi         Super Nova                0 laps