it to his teammate Sato on the straight heading towards Lisboa turn. But Sato missed the braking point for the corner and he crashed into a tyre barrier and retired. This gave the lead back to his teammate Karthikeyan, who opened out a small but comfortable lead over the remainder of the field. That same lap, Ho had an accident leaving Mandarin Oriental Bend corner and retired. Positions changed behind him as Couto overtook Fukuda to move into second on lap two and he soon got ahead of Kaffer for second during the following lap. By the conclusion of the fifth lap, Karthikeyan led Couto by five seconds. However, on the next lap, Karthikeyan lost control of his vehicle at Paiol corner and struck the wall, becoming the third retirement. That prompted the safety car's deployment for two laps to allow for his car to be extricated from the track. In the meantime, Cochet drove over debris from Karthikeyan's car and he lost the opportunity to win the race. At the lap nine restart, Kaffer began to battle Couto for the first position. He went to the outside line to attempt a pass on Couto into Lisboa corner on the next lap but the latter maintained the lead on the inside line. That lap, Bruni retired following the collision against the wall at Lisboa turn. On the 12th lap, Kaffer overtook Couto entering Lisboa turn but he braked too late and ran wide entering the corner. This put him close to hitting a barrier as Couto retook the lead. Friesacher brushed a wall at R Bend on the lap 12 but he continued without any major vehicular damage. On lap 14, Couto braked too late for Lisboa turn and Kaffer took the lead. He held the position for the rest of the leg to win by 3.4 seconds over Couto and began the second leg from pole position. Zangarelli and Montin were third and fourth and Fukuda took fifth. Friesacher was sixth, Scheckter finished seventh after he was delayed by a slower driver, Toccacelo took eighth, Priaulx ninth and Monteiro tenth. Kurosawa finished eleventh, having moved up eight places from his starting position of 19th. The final finishers Collins, Sundberg, Yoong, the Japanese duo of Ara and Kaneishi, Lechner, Takagi, Lee, Cochet, Pavlović, Baumgartner, Lei and Merszei. Leg 2 The second leg commenced later that day at 15:35 local time