Jolyon Palmer finished fifth after an eventful Feature Race in Austria, to score valuable points for his GP2 Series title bid.

Starting from the front row, a slow start for the 23-year-old saw him challenged into the opening corner by Mitch Evans and Stefano Colletti, and the trio entered turn one three abreast. Meanwhile Felipe Nasr had taken the lead with polesitter Johnny Cecotto in second. Jolyon compled lap one in fourth place and set upon Coletti ahead of him.

By lap five the pair were fighting for second as they passed Cecotto, but this had given Nasr a break and the leader briefly extended his gap. However, Coletti upped his pace and in the meantime, Cecotto was closing on Palmer, who, unlike his rivals, was running the soft tyre for the opening stint.

With his tyres fast degrading, Jolyon drove a very defensive sequence of laps to keep Cecotto behind and pit as late as possible. However with Stoffel Vandoorne opting to ditch his soft tyres a couple of laps earlier and posting very fast times, Palmer pitted at the end of lap 14, rejoining in 13th place just behind the Belgian.

Jolyon was then forced to defend from Raffaele Marciello, but quickly regrouped, posting the fastest lap of the race so far on his 18th tour. At this stage the trio were substantially quicker than many of the leaders, but with Vandoorne struggling to pass Simon Trummer, the gap between them shrunk. Jolyon then took full advantage to follow Vandoorne when he finally made his way past Trummer, and shadowed his rival as they caught Connor Daly and Tio Ellinas.

Palmer attacked Vandoorne as they passed Daly, just when the leaders began to make their pitstops. This quickly hauled Jolyon up the order, and with just Nasr and Coletti needing to pit on lap 30, he was into fourth place.

The two leaders pitted on lap 31, rejoining without losing places, and as Jolyon headed into turn one, Marciello passed him for fourth, which he followed by taking team mate Coletti. This left Palmer no option but to attempt an assault on the cars ahead, however despite initial attempts he lost ground and with Cecotto closing behind, took the chequered flag in fifth place, securing a useful grid spot for tomorrow's sprint race.

There will be full coverage of tomorrow's race on this website.

GP2 Series Austria race one result
1, Felipe Nasr, Carlin, 40 Laps
2, Stoffel Vandoorne, ART, +3.874s
3, Raffaele Marciello, Racing Eng, +4.573s
4, Stefano Coletti, Racing Eng, +7.210s
5, Jolyon Palmer, DAMS, +8.902s
6, Johnny Cecotto, Trident, +10.319s
7, Mitch Evans, Russian Time, +14.924s
8, Alexander Rossi, Caterham, +20.994s
9 Takuya Izawa, ART, +28.182s
10, Arthur Pic, Campos, +30.170s