Jordan King mastered tricky conditions to take a pole-to-flag win for the second weekend running in a GP2 reversed-grid race, this time at Silverstone. The British Racing Engineering driver looked to have done enough to repel an attack from Luca Ghiotto, only for rain in the last three laps to throw in another variable.

King, who as leader was having to judge the conditions without reference, managed to cling on from the closing Italian by just half a second.

Ghiotto qualified last after mechanical failure on Friday, then finished fifth in the feature race, so his Trident car lined up fourth for this race. He lost a place to the lightning-starting Oliver Rowland, but passed Norman Nato and Rowland in quick formation just before midway, and took only a couple more laps to grab second from Nobuharu Matsushita.

At this point Ghiotto was 1.8s adrift of King, and he sliced the gap to within half a second, before the relative tyre performance appeared to swing back towards King, who augmented his advantage back towards the three-second mark just before the late drizzle.

The rain gave Rowland a chance to get on terms with Matsushita, and he forced the Japanese into a mistake at Brooklands. Matsushita outbraked himself, the ART Grand Prix driver dropping to fifth.

Rowland went on to claim his second podium of the weekend with MP Motorsport, but he only just pipped a fast-closing Antonio Giovinazzi, who fought through from the fourth row in his Prema Racing car.

Qualifying topper Nato ended his disappointing racing weekend when he sailed into the gravel with two laps remaining and out of sixth place.

This promoted Russian Time’s Raffaele Marciello to sixth, the Italian winning a long battle with Mitch Evans.

Evans fell way down the order in the closing laps to finish 13th, so up to seventh came Prema’s feature race victor Pierre Gasly, who made up places after losing ground in the opening stages.

The final point was claimed by Carlin driver Marvin Kirchhofer after a big battle for the lower points positions throughout the race.

RESULTS – 21 LAPS: