Bruno Senna has powered his way to his first ever GP2 win, making full use of a chaotic start to the race to switch pit strategies and outfox poleman Timo Glock in the closing stages of an frantic first race in Barcelona.

The Brazilian's life was made a lot easier when Jason Tahinci stalled on the grid before the start, which was then aborted. This was to the detriment of front row starter Andi Zuber, who stalled as the others got under way again: he was pushed into the pitlane and his race was run.

With the temperature rising Glock was serene at the second start, pulling away strongly from the second row of Lucas di Grassi and Nicolas Lapierre. The Frenchman was particularly slow, which made Senna's strong start look even stronger as he stormed by.

Giorgio Pantano had another one of his lightning starts as well: so fast was he that he moved up from eighth on the grid to be ahead of Mike Conway, who had started fifth but failed to leave enough room for the lightning quick Italian. Conway ran straight into Pantano at turn one, who was pushed into countryman Luca Filippi and then dominoed into Antonio Pizzonia, with all four drivers out on the spot.

More mayhem ensued one corner later as Xandi Negrao speared across the gravel and into the barriers, necessitating a quick check up in the local hospital after he briefly passed out.

With Karun Chandhok having run over the grass before spearing across the oncoming traffic on the front straight into the wall, there was no choice but to call out the safety car, which was soon leading the field through the pits for their first 'racing' lap.

Opportunities like that don't come along every day and, with options flying furiously through the heads of most of the men on the pitwall, the chance of a penalty free stop was served up on a plate.

Lucas di Grassi and Senna were the first men to stop, followed immediately by most of the remaining field. With a few remaining stragglers taking their stop the next time around, the drivers who didn't stop were but four: race leader Glock, along with Adrian Zaugg, Sergio Jimenez and Andy Soucek.

The big question now was how would the strategy work? The three leaders had to hope that they could pull out a big enough gap so that they could take advantage of the newer tyres later in the race, when everyone else's were fading away.

Behind the non-stoppers were Senna, who had made a good enough stop to get past di Grassi, who in turn had dropped to seventh behind Nicolas Lapierre but ahead of Borja Garcia, Vitaly Petrov, Kazuki Nakajima and Roldan Rodriguez.

Glock made a tremendous restart when the racers were released, easily pulling away from Zaugg, while behind him Senna was wasting no time in moving up the grid: he was immediately past Soucek and looking for more.

The German's race was now largely in the hands of Zaugg, who was doing him a tremendous favour by holding up the remainder of the field as Glock pulled away at over a second a lap: he needed 30 seconds to be sure of the win, and was doing all he could to find it as quickly as possible.

Further back and Rodriguez was having a tremendous race, devouring his competitors like a man at a pie eating contest. He was immediately past Nakajima into turn one, and then into the points paying positions a lap later by claiming Garcia's scalp at the same spot.