After three laps the order at the front settled with Switzerland having a 2.3-second lead from France, New Zealand, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Netherlands and South Africa. With changes to the regulations this season, the cars headed towards their first ever mandatory Sprint race pit stop with France and New Zealand being the first to dive in.

France had a slower stop, and New Zealand’s Earl Bamber was released alongside France. With New Zealand’s nose being just ahead France was forced to ease off allowing Bamber to take the position as the pair exited the pit lane. However, the team made the call to give the position back to France to avoid any further penalty for what could be deemed to be an unsafe release.

A lap later Jani pitted and, after a slick stop by the Swiss crew, rejoined with a comfortable lead. A great stop from the Irish team also leap-frogged Adam Carroll ahead of Italy and into fifth. On lap seven the order was Switzerland still up at the front from New Zealand, France, Portugal, Ireland, Netherlands, Italy and Australia. Switzerland held on to win the Sepang Sprint race for the third year running to become the fifth different race winner in the five races so far this season.

“It was a great race, we had very good pace, a good re-start and pit stop so it was just a perfect race for me,” said Jani. “The big race is the Feature race though, and we are at the back of the grid so it’s a totally different task. It’s about the average of the weekend and we need to get a good points average.”

France’s Loic Duval said: “The pit stop was not that good and I ended up third. I thought New Zealand may have a drive-through or something like that as the car was released in front of me from the stop, but he let me go back past. The car was not that good so we have to improve a little bit for this afternoon but after that, we were okay and there was no problem at all.”

“We got a really good pit stop,” said Bamber who brought Black Beauty home in third. “The team did a fantastic job and it was quite close between me and Loic where I just squeezed past, but the team radioed me to let France back past because of an unsafe release. I let him pass on the back straight and then I finished the race in third. It was a good result so we will see how I do from 15th this afternoon."

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