Malcolm Rice took the win in the inaugral GPO Sprint Bahrain Grand Prix. Nick Oldenhuis came home a fighting second with Michael Pieneman rounding off the podium finishers in third.

The newly created Sprint series, which takes place on Sunday mornings (GMT), saw 15 eager drivers on the grid ready to impress and Rice, in his own car, coverted his pole position to the lead down into turn 1 while behind, Oldenhuis battled for second with Rothmans Racing’s Ed Williams, the pair swapping positions constantly. This allowed Malcolm Rice to pull out a small lead, until Ed Williams crashed out on lap 9 of the race trying to keep up with Oldenhuis’ new GRIDline Racing car. This allowed Pieneman into the final podium slot.

Behind the lead three, an almight battle over the rest of points finishers was keeping everyones attention. Jermaine Venhorst had avoided some turn 1 jockeying to take fourth and was holding up Craig Johnston, Simon Smith, Maurice Willems and Ken Hunter. Hunter would lose control of his Rothmans on lap 3 taking himself out of the equasion, which then allowed Willems in his his BackMarker Brigade DNQ to attack his sister car stablemate Simon Smith, however an ill planned move lost Willems his front wing in the final corner and so he was in for an early pitstop. This then proved to be a blessing in disguise for Maurice as after dispatching Emmanuel Baako and Patrick Wier, he ran in clear air for the rest of the race, gaining time on the position swapping fest that was Venhorst, Johnston and Smith.

By the time everyone had pitted, Rice had opened up a good 15 seconds over Oldenhuis and over fourty seconds on a lonely Pieneman in the second GRIDline. The battles behind had not quite finished however as Smith, who’d lost out in the stops dispatched Venhorst for fifth and closed down Willems quickly only to have a costly spin in the closing laps and hault his charge. Further back we’d lost Flavio Nobrega from a points scoring position and also Emmanuel Baako who’d worked his way to 9th when he retired his Deletraz in the barriers. The other retirement was Myles Dixon who suffered a screen freeze and by the time the game returned, he was already missing some vital pieces of his car!

Malcolm Rice took a comanding win with a lights to flag victory and fastest lap for good measure – a fantastic achievement for Rice Racing and a race that will go down in history as the first ever GPO Sprint event. Oldenhuis and Pieneman make sure GRIDline take the constructors lead with second and third overall and team boss Stuart Fields will be delighted with that.

Behind Willems takes a delighted fourth ahead of a stunned Simon Smith grabbing one of best finishes in his sim racing career to date. Patrick Wier took sixth after a determined drive and playing catch up after a cautious start, however his end lap times were on pace with those in front. Jermaine Venhorst was demoted to seventh after two drive throughs in the closing stages for ignoring blue flags, marring what was a stiring drive for RedSpeed. Craig Johnston came home ninth after a lengthy pitstop to repair damage following an off whilst James Scanlan improved his pace over the course of the race to claim ninth and Lee Massey grabbed the final point with a dogged drive to 10th depsite being significantly down on pace.

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