Jolyon Palmer has claimed a masterful victory in today's GP2 Feature Race at the Hungaroring, his maiden Feature Race win to add to the Sprint race win he claimed in Monaco last year.

Starting from seventh on the grid, the Carlin driver made an excellent start and was third by the first corner, squeezing past the two DAMS cars of Marcus Ericsson and Stephane Richelmi, and the slow starting car of pole sitter Tom Dillmann.

Starting on medium tyres, unlike other cars around him, he was able to go much longer in his first stint than his rivals, taking the lead on lap nine. He pitted for fresh tyres on lap 17 and emerged side by side with Ericsson, who just edged in front.

But it was clear that Jolyon was considerably quicker than the Swede, spending several laps tucked right under his rear wing. He made an audacious move on lap 20 around the outside of turn two but ran wide, and then attempted a move at turn one on lap 23. But after taking a few laps to regroup, and following his engineer's radio advice of 'playing the long game' he finally made a move stick up the inside of Ericsson at turn one on lap 28.
 
He then proceeded to stretch out an immediate gap to Ericsson, regularly lapping over two seconds faster to eventually seal glory by over 15s.

Jolyon's win means he will start from eighth on the grid in the feature race tomorrow, and has risen to seventh in the driver's championship with 64 points.

Speaking on the podium afterwards, Jolyon enthused: "This means so much. It's my first podium of the year after being bumped off at Barcelona so I'm really pleased for myself and the team. It's a great day for Carlin.

"We held onto the tyres really well in the first half and the race was relatively comfortable. Then we came out of the pits side by side with Marcus but couldn't quite stay ahead but then we had probably one of the best battles I've had in GP2. We were wheel to wheel a few times and I was very relieved when I finally made the move!

"It feels like it's pressure off now I've got the first Feature Race win and hopefully we can build on this. We've had some bad luck in the weekends prior to this so I'm really happy and hopefully we can get some more wins during the rest of the season."

GP2 Feature Race result, Hungary
1. J Palmer, Carlin, 36 laps
2. M Ericsson, DAMS, +15.4s
3. F Nasr, Carlin, +15.7s
4. F Leimer, Racing, +19.4s
5. S Richelmi, DAMS, +19.7s
6. S Trummer, Rapax, +21.4s
7. M Evans, Arden, +22.5s
8. N Berthon, Trident, +36.4s
9. J Calado, ART Grand Prix, +38.2s
10. S Bird, RUSSIAN TIME, +44.6s

Jolyon is back in action tomorrow (Sunday 28 July) at 09.35am in the GP2 Sprint Race at the Hungaroring. Full coverage including live timing, will be available on Jolyon's official website www.jolyonpalmer.com , while TV coverage of all sessions will be available on Sky F1's HD Channel.