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Senna name back on Monaco podium

The third round of GP2 2008 came from Monaco that for the first time holds two GP2 races in a weekend. After two rounds Racing Engineering driver Giorgio Pantano has twenty-four points and leads the championship. Romain Grosjean is second with for ART nineteen points and Sebastien Buemi is third with fourteen for Arden.

On the driver front yet another change; Andy Soucek will this week be driving for DPR replacing Giacomo Ricci as the substitute for injured Michael Herek and GP2 Asia runner Marcello Puglisi will drive for Durango replacing inured Davide Valsecchi.

In practise it was Monaco expect Pastor Maldonado who set the fastest time for Piquet Sports, half a second faster than team mate Andres Zuber despite an incident with FMS driver Adam Carroll. Bruno Senna was third for iSport, showing no ill effects of the dog incident with Soucek fourth in an increasable performance the unfancied DPR team.

Qualifying was topped again by Mr Monaco, Pastor Maldonado. Senna will start second with Mike Conway into the top three for Trident. The session was stopped when Adrian Valles now at BCN crashed after setting the fourth fastest time and dumping all his oil onto the track. Another driver in trouble was Soucek, who failed to set a time after going straight on at Ste Devote on his first lap.

Overnight, after qualifying Zuber was given a fifteen place grid penalty for the incident with Carroll in free practise. Also BCN driver Milos Pavlovic will not start the race, he has pulled out as a result of illness.

In the feature race Bruno Senna won to add the legacy of the Senna name in the streets of Monaco, following in the footsteps Uncle Ayrton who won six Formula One races.
He took the lead from Maldonado right from the beginning of the race, and had already opened out a small lead by the time they reached Ste Devote for the first time. On the opening lap the predictable mid race crash brought out the yellow flags. Vitaly Petrov collided with DAMS driver Kamui Kobayashi on the run down from Casino Square.

Championship leader Pantano made a poor start from fifth on the grid dropping to seventh behind iSports Karun Chandhok and championship rival Grosjean, while behind Luca Fillippi, who is still pointless made a goof start and moved into the top ten on lap one.

In the opening stages it appeared that Senna and Maldonado had been given Formula One cars as they traded fastest laps as pulled way clear of Conway who could do nothing to keep up with the front two.

When the pit window opened Sebastien Buemi was the first of the top ten top made the mandatory stops for tyres. The rest of the front runners pitted periodically over the course of the next few laps with Senna and Maldonado pitting last of all.

Both Senna and Maldonado had good stops and neither was able to gain an advantage over the other as they rejoined sill first and second with about the same gap between them.

The top two were miles ahead of anybody else but he safety car would close everybody up together again. Buemi and Javier Villa of Racing Engineering collided as the Swiss driver attempted to pass.

The incident claimed innocent victims in the shape of Fillippi and Campos driver Ben Hanley. Both had to return to the pits but were able to rejoin after minor repairs. Grosjean, Pantano and the lapped FMS driver Adam Carroll were next on the scene; they all got themselves involved in the incident and were forced to retire.

After the safety car came in; Senna lead from Maldonado, Conway, Chandhok, Valles, Super Nova driver Alvaro Parente, FMS driver Roldan Rodriguez and Tridents Ho-Pin Tung to complete the top eight points scorers.

Fillippi’s afternoon got worse, after pitting as part of the multi-car accident he spun off and parked at Ste Devote.

The battle for the win raged until the flag with Maldonado putting increasing pressure on Senna.

At the end of the race Senna was able to maintain his lead winning from Maldonado. Behind Conway was on for third place until, on the last lap, Villa collected him and dropped him down to eighth place a lap behind the winner.

Benefiting from this was Chandhok who took third place ahead of Valles, Parente, Rodriquez, Tung and the disappointed Conway, finishing eighth put as a consolation he started from pole in the sprint race.

Conway made up for his sprint race disappointment by winning the sprint race from his Trident team mate Tung.

Monaco is a track that is famous for its lack of overtaking and that trend was obvious for the GP2 cars as the only time somebody gained a position was as a result of a crash up ahead or a penalty.

Conway got the best start as he kept Tung behind into Ste Devote leading the back up the hill. In the crush into turn one Valles took to the escape road to avoid hitting the back of Rodriquez, and Maldonado, starting seventh tagged the back of Chandhok sending both into the barriers and retirement.

Further back down the field, the returning Christian Bakkerud for Super Nova hit the back of Zuber sending the car bouncing up into the air and down hard into the barriers. Bakkerud has a long history of back injuries and missed the Turkish round with a re-occurrence. Bakkerud was out but Zuber was able to rejoin a lap behind after a change of rear wing

With three cars in the barriers at turn one, the safety car was deployed.

When the safety car came in three laps later Conway was on a mission, holding the lead from Tung and opening out a two second lead after only one lap and 7.4 seconds after three laps.

Down the order, Pantano, who had a retirement on Friday and was starting way down the order had a coming together with Puglisi which sent both cars down the escape road just after the tunnel. Puglisi resumed but Pantano was out as a result of the contact.

A lap later the safety car was out again, Puglisi’s team mate at Durango, Alberto Valerio spun into the Armco barrier and was stranded in the middle of the track.

With Conway’s lead gone again, he found Puglisi behind him in the safety car queue, now a lap down following the incident with Pantano. This gave him all the protection he needed to open out his lead again eventually winning by eighteen seconds. While Tung had a tough battle to hold off Parente who desperately wanted to take second place.

The only other change of a points paying position after the second safety car was when Valles was given a drive through penalty for cutting the chicane at the first corner. He used the escape road to avoid hitting the back of Rodriquez but his shortcut brought him out ahead.

He was running fourth at the time of his penalty, as a result, Rodriquez moved up in to the fourth place he should never have lost, Senna was fifth and Soucek was promoted to sixth.

With no possibility of a pass the top six finished in that order, making Conway the sixth different winner in the six races so far this year.

In the championship; Pantano has maintained his lead but he now is sharing it with Senna, as they both have twenty-four points. Third and fourth is also a tie, Parente and Grosjean both have nineteen points. Sprint race winner Conway is now in tenth place with ten points.

Written: Sun, 25 May 2008 10:35:14