Jolyon Palmer was forced to retire from the final GP2 Series race of the season with damage to his car's handling in this morning's Sprint Race.

Starting from seventh, a difficult opening lap saw Jolyon shuffled down the order after being forced to take avoiding action at the first corner when Felipe Nasr and pole man Johnny Cecotto collided. Palmer recovered to tenth at the end of the first lap and then moved up to ninth on the second lap with a great move around the outside of Rio Haryanto at the turn four chicane.

The safety car was deployed on the second lap to clear the crashed car of Alexander Rossi, but stayed out for just a lap. On lap four Jolyon was attempting a move on Sergio Canamasas for eighth, but made a slight mistake in the Marina section of the circuit, and dropped behind Coletti and Julian Leal.

Another appearance from the safety car on lap 10 bunched the cars up again. When the race restarted, Jolyon was tucked up behind Leal and made a move stick on lap 14. Leal came back at him but Jolyon fought him off to move up to 10th, although there was contact between the pair.

But on lap 17 Jolyon slowed dramatically with his team informing him over the radio of damage and was forced to retire to the pits.

Jolyon is classified seventh overall in the final GP2 Series Drivers' standings, his best final classification in his GP2 career. His Carlin team finished second in the Teams' Championship despite being level on points with RUSSIAN TIME, who claimed the championship on wins countback.

Speaking afterwards, Jolyon commented; "I had a bad start and then I had to avoid Nasr and Cecotto at the first corner so lost a lot of places there. I made up a few places before the safety car came out, but unfortunately afterwards I made a little mistake and lost a couple of places. I passed Leal twice and the second time we had contact, and there was some damage to the car which forced me to retire.  Everything that could have gone wrong did really, not the way to end a season which has been so strong in the second half of the year."

Abu Dhabi Sprint Race result:

1. James Calado, ART GP, 22 laps
2. Dani Clos, MP Motorsport, +0.7s
3. Fabio Leimer, Racing Engineering, +4.9s
4. Sam Bird, RUSSIAN TIME, +9.4s
5. Daniel Abt, ART GP, +9.9s
6. Marcus Ericsson, DAMS, +11.9s
7. Simon Trummer, Rapax, +13.1s
8. Sergio Canamasas, Caterham, +16.4s
9. Stefano Coletti, Rapax, +18.1s
DNF. Jolyon Palmer, Carlin