UpdateF1 >> Formula 1 News > Senna and Glock take GP2 wins

Famous name back to the front

Round two of GP2 was held in Barcelona, Spain. After the opening round of the season from Bahrain, Luca Fillippi lead the championship with 16 points from Timo Glock who has 14, and Nicholas Lapierre is third with eight.

The major news ahead of the event was that ART driver Michael Ammermuller was still struggling with the wrist injury he sustained in the Bahrain event, and that had ruled him out of a demonstration run and a test session with the Red Bull F1 team. His place would be taken by World Series by Renault driver Mikhail Aleshin.

The Friday action began with the free practise session. Timo Glock was fastest driving for iSport, two-tenths of a second faster than Giorgio Pantano for Campos Racing. Third was Williams tester Kazuki Nakajima driving for DAMS. Championship leader Luca Fillippi set the fourteenth fastest time for Super Nova, while new ART driver Aleshin failed to set a time.

Qualifying was dominated by iSport who created history by securing the first front row lockout for a team in GP2 history, this despite the dominance of ART in previous years.

Glock was again fastest setting a lap time four-tenths of a second faster than team mate Andres Zuber who joined him on the front row. Pantano was third but was penalised for failing to slow when passing yellow flags in the morning practise session. He was given a five place grid penalty and would start eighth, thus promoting ART driver Luca di Grassi into third place. Even without Pantano’s penalty, Glock’s pole time was almost eight-tenths of a second faster than the best non-iSport driver.

Another driver feeling the wrath of the stewards was Nakajima who had qualified fifth just behind di Grassi but was hit with a ten-place grid penalty for shunting BCN driver Ho-Pin Tung during the sprint race in Bahrain. With the penalties Fillippi would start ninth after qualifying tenth.

On Saturday afternoon the Senna name returned to the winners circle at a Grand Prix weekend for the first time since October 1993 as Bruno Senna took victory for Arden.

He wasn’t the fastest car on the track but took advantage of Glock’s strange pit strategy to take victory by over five seconds.

After qualifying this race belonged to iSport and the only question as the cars lined up on the grid was which iSport car will win. Within ten minutes of that question iSport had thrown it away.

At the start Jason Tachini of FMS international stalled on the grid, aborting the start. All the other cars moved off onto a second formation lap apart from Zuber, who had also stalled from second on the grid, eliminating him from the race.

Carnage occurred at the second start. Glock, now alone on the front row, lead with di Grassi and Senna behind. Further back Karun Chandhok put two wheels of his Durango on the grass right in the middle of the pace, spun right into the path of the other cars behind and into the wall on the other side, somehow not hitting anybody else.

More carnage was to occur at turn one. Off the grid Campos driver Giorgio Pantano had another one of his lightning starts, jumping from eighth to fifth right behind Super Nova’s Mike Conway. Conway, who had a slow start, did not leave enough room for the Italian, who ran into him.

This pushed Pantano into his compatriot, and Conway’s teammate, Luca Fillippi who in turn was pushed into FMS Internationals Antonio Pizzonia, eliminating all four on the spot.

At turn two the carnage was to continue as Xandi Negrao speared his Minardi Piquet Sports car across the gravel and into the barriers. He would be taken to hospital for checks and miss Sundays sprint race. This left the stewards no choice to deploy the safety car.

With the safety car on the track di Grassi and Senna were the first to make their mandatory pit stop. Four drivers, incredibly, did not take the opportunity to make a stop. They were Glock, Adrian Zaugg of Arden, Sergio Jimenez of Racing Engineering and Andy Soucek of DPR.

When the race restarted Glock made a break for it and immediately opened up an advantage over the rest of the field. His chances of victory now rested with Zaugg who needed to hold up the rest of the field while he pulled out the 30-second advantage he needed to make his pit stop and resume still leading.

Senna was slowly moving forward he had passed Soucek at the restart and had slowly moved his way up to third behind teammate Zaugg. Four laps later Zaugg spun into retirement releasing Senna into second place, 19 seconds behind Glock who has still not pitted.

Kazuki Nakajima is the most entertaining man in this years GP2 championship and he didn’t disappoint, catching and passing cars for fun.

After starting fifteenth points was a real possibility until he came up behind Durango’s Borja Garcia. Garcia was slow round the last corner and Nakajima ran into the back of him and suffered a puncture.

By lap 27 Glock was leading by 19.2 seconds from Senna when Glock finally had to pit. He resumed in third behind Senna and di Grassi, who was struggling with his tires. He quickly passed di Grassi but was 14.1 seconds behind Senna with just five laps to go.

A fierce battle had broken out over the final points. Vitaly Petrov of Campos was holding up Aleshin, Jimenez and Javier Villa of Racing Engineering, and Sakon Yamamoto of BCN quickly joined. At the end of the race all had managed to get passed Petrov. Aleshin finished sixth, Jimenez was seventh and Villa was eighth securing an all Racing Engineering front row for the second race.

The other point’s finishes were Roldan Rodriguez of Minardi Piquet Sports in fourth and Garcia in fifth, followed by the battle for the final points. The fastest lap bonus point went to Nakajima.

Glock laid his disappointments from the feature race to rest by running to a dominant victory in the sprint race.

Garcia stalled on the grid from third at the original start, but when the field took the grid for the second time everybody got away cleanly. Until they reached the first corner that is.

Villa made a good start from pole holding his advantage of finishing the feature race in eighth. Back down the order Rodriguez spun at the first corner and was out of the race taking Tachini out with him and completing a disappointing weekend for the Turk. At the very back, Fillippi made a storming start, gaining six places on the first lap to put him fifteenth.

As a result of the first corner incident Villa had opened up a small advantage over Glock and the rest of the field. Knowing that once he was caught it wouldn’t be long before he was passed, he had to use this opportunity to hold the lead for as long as possible. His plan was working as he was the second fastest man on the track, pulling away from Di Grassi and Senna in third and fourth. The only problem was that Glock in second place was faster and closing.

Soon the inevitable happened and Glock was able to slipstream past and immediately open out a huge lead. He over took on the main start and finish straight and by the next time round he was 1.1 seconds ahead.

Christian Bakkerud of DPR had pinched a nerve in his back during the feature race hence was in constant pain and holding up a queue of cars behind, but it was Pantano who was making best use of the situation by passing drivers one at a time as they started a new lap.

Bakkerud battled for as long as he could but once he had fallen to the back of the train he decided it was best to retire.

Aleshin was running well in sixth place until a spin at the last corner ended his race. This handed sixth to Petrov who once again had a train behind him including Pizzonia and Pantano.

Back at the front Glock was leading by a country mile by this point, and Villa was starting to come
under pressure from Di Grassi and Senna but was able to stay ahead as the battle raged for the final podium place.

The battle for the last point finally got the better of Petrov as Nakajima passed to take the place, only to be passed himself by Pantano with just two laps to go.

At the end of the race Glock had backed off but still won dominantly from Villa, who drove sensible to hold off third placed Di Grassi and Senna, who had to settle for fourth. Behind the Brazilian pair came Jimenez, who had a lonely race after a slow start, making up a Brazilian 3-4-5. He just held of Pantano who scored the final point for sixth.

As part of his dominant performance Glock also set the races fastest lap.

After two rounds it is now Glock who leads the championship. He has 31 points, Senna is now second with 18 points, and despite not scoring in Spain Fillippi holds on to third place with 16 points.

Written: Mon, 14 May 2007 12:35:39