Jolyon Palmer claimed 12th place in today's (Saturday) Monaco GP2 Sprint Race, recovering well from 19th on the grid.

After being taken out the first corner collision in yesterday's Feature Race, the 22-year-old Carlin driver made good progress throughout today's event, including feisty overtaking moves on a circuit that is notoriously difficult to pass on.

The race started in difficult greasy conditions, with slight rain falling on the legendary street circuit, but with all cars running on slick tyres.

Jolyon made a good start to take two places on the first lap, running in P17, and then settled into the race behind Canamasas, just over two seconds behind the Spanish Caterham driver at the end of lap two. The gap was reduced to 0.2 seconds within four laps, with Jolyon frequently lapping half a second faster than his rival.

Now running in 14th after penalties for Simon Trummer and Daniel Abt, Jolyon made his move on Canamasas on lap 13. Braking late into the tight Rascsasse corner at the end of the lap, Palmer squeezed his way through to claim 13th.

Jolyon then set about Jake Rosenzweig ahead of him, immediately closing down the gap and joining a queue of cars behind Jon Lancaster. 13th became 12th when Sam Bird pitted, and Jolyon was soon promoted to 11th when Rosenzweig tagged Lancaster at the hairpin on lap 23.

Looking set for 11th, Jolyon was forced to settle for 12th when he was re-passed by Canamasas on the final lap.

Speaking afterwards Jolyon commented: "It was a tough race coming through from 19th but I managed a few moves and got into 11th. Then I was pushing really hard to get 10th and made a big mistake costing me a place.

"I'm happy to have had an aggressive race, making a number of places at a track that's difficult to overtake on and most importantly avoiding a penalty for Silverstone. Now we need to move on and focus on taking a win next time out."

Monaco GP2 Sprint Race result:

1. Stefano Coletti, 30 laps
2. Adrian Quaife-Hobbs, +1.8s
3. Mitch Evans, +2.2s
4. Felipe Nasr, +2.5s
5. James Calado, +3.7s
6. Rene Binder, +19.2s
7. Kevin Ceccon, +20.0s
8. Stefan Richelmi, +20.5s
9. Daniel De Jong, +21.1s
12. Jolyon Palmer, +35.7s

Jolyon is next back in GP2 action on 28-30 June for his home round at Silverstone. Full coverage including live timing, will be available on Jolyon's official website www.jolyonpalmer.com, while live TV coverage of all sessions will be available on Sky's F1 HD Channel.