UpdateF1 >> Formula 1 News > GP2: ROund 5

Pantano and Senna take wins

Silverstone was the home for the fifth round of the GP2 Championship. After four rounds Giorgio Pantano leads the championship with Racing Engineering and has 35 points, Bruno Senna is second with 28 points for iSport and Sebastien Buemi is third for Arden with twenty points.

In driver news, Davide Valsecchi is finally back for Durango, he has missed the last few races since his huge qualifying accident in Turkey.

Romain Grosjean topped the practise session desperate to score some major points this weekend after failing to score in the last two races. His time was 0.288 seconds faster than the home hero, Mike Conway who was second from Trident. Third was Grosjean’s team-mate Luca Fillippi.

Senna took pole in qualifying, on a track the holds some bad memories for the Senna name. He beat Grosjean who will start with him on the front row. Andres Zuber will start third for Piquet Sports with championship leader Pantano back on the third row in fifth place.

Pantano extended his lead at the head of the championship after winning a highly entertaining race on Saturday.

Starting fifth he was up to fourth by the first corner after rushing past a slow starting Zuber, but Conway has the worst start, almost stalling and falling to the back of the pack.

Senna leads early from Di Grassi who had a great start to pass Grosjean. Senna held his lead for three laps until he became the first of many cars to spin at Stowe and he fell behind Di Grassi, Grosjean, Pantano, and Zuber to drop to fifth place.

He would regain fourth when of the following lap Zuber made a mistake and went straight on over the grass losing a lot of time.

Karun Chandhok started tenth for iSport and was slowly picking up places and before the pit stops started he was in fifth place behind his teammate and ahead of Fillippi who was following him through the field.

Grosjean was the first of the front runners to pit in an attempt to close the gap on Di Grassi, but with the three leaders pitting on consecutive laps there was no changes in their positions. Behind Kamui Kobayashi took an early stop and was able to work his way up into fourth place. Zuber was now fifth after he too made an early stop.

Chandhok was sixth and Senna had dropped to seventh after a incident in the pit lane with Di Grassi. Di Grassi was released into the path of Senna as he made his way in and had to break violently to avoid hitting the back of the Campos car.

Kobayashi’s good run came to a sad end of lap twenty when he retired from the race with a mechanical problem.

Into the final third of the race Grosjean was struggling with worn tires and began locking up into every corner. Pantano closed in and took second after some wheel banging at Abbey.

Buemi was into seventh and was putting pressure on Senna who was right behind Chandhok and Zuber in a four car train for places fourth to seventh, which was fast closing in on Grosjean to make it a five car train.

Outside the points Pastor Maldonado crashed his Piquet car hard into the wall after becoming another car to run wide at Stowe.

Chandhok passed Grosjean at Brooklands after many laps stuck behind him, which included a pass which he was forced to give back after passing under the yellow flags from the stricken Maldonado car.

At the same time as Chandhok took third the lead changed. After setting many fastest laps Pantano had closed down and passed Di Grassi with a similar move to Nigel Mansell’s on Nelson Piquet in 1987. He set of for a third win of the season.

After Chandhok had passed Grosjean he was able to pull away to finish third behind Di Grassi in second.

Grosjean was still in fourth holding up Senna and Buemi. After another lock up from Grosjean, Senna lost time and it was the opportunity Buemi needed to pass Senna and take fifth.

A lap later Senna passed Buemi at Stowe only to lose it again by running wide at Vale.

On the last lap Grosjean was still holding fourth but Buemi then passed after yet another lockup demoting the Frenchman to fifth place and it was going to get worse as just a few corners later Senna took that from him.

That was not the end of the story as Senna ran wide at Priory and Grosjean regained his place and won a drag race across the line to finish fifth with Senna sixth.

Despite two trips off the track Zuber finished seventh with Fillippi in eighth to complete the points.

Race two was battled out in very wet conditions and desperate to make up for his Saturday errors, Senna claimed an impressive victory.

Even before the race even started two cars were out as Buemi and DPR driver Michael Herck crashed on their first lap to the grid.

Senna started third and jumped ahead of a slow starting Zuber to run side by side with Fillippi until he passed at Abbey on the first lap. Fillippi held second until he ran off the track later in the lap losing the position to Di Grassi and Pantano, who with a great start was up to third after starting eighth.

After Fillippi’s opening lap problems ART suffered more problems on lap two when Grosjean lost his nose and was fored to pit for repairs. He would have a great recovery drive, coming for sixteenth after the pit stop to finish eighth.

Chandhok was another early retirement spinning out of the race and hitting the barriers. He was soon joined by Ho-Pin Tung who spun his Trident twice before deciding to retire.

By half distance Senna had opened out a huge lead over Di Grassi and only needed to keep it on the track to claim victory. Di Grassi was holding second from Pantano with Conway in fourth after starting fourteenth.

Andy Soucek of Super Nova was in fifth place defending hard against Kobayashi. Kobayashi thought he has the pass done but Soucek was able to defend the line, but he touched the white line at the eedge of the track and spun out.

The FMS drivers were having fun at Bridge. Marko Asmer spun and demolished a advertising hording before team mate Roldon Rodriquez spun at the same place just a few laps later.

Javier Villa was another to spin out. On lap twenty-two he spun at Club and lost his 100% finishing record for this season.

Senna was now starting to catch the back-markers, needing to be very careful as he could not see them and they could not see him. He maneuvered slowly and safely though the traffic making the most of his lead to ensure safe passage to victory.
Di Grassi came home second ahead of Pantano who seemed to settle for third and four points rather than gamble in the hunt for five, and Conway finished fourth.

Petrov finished fifth despite a spin on the last lap, but he only held it because Kobayashi was fifth was the innocent victim of a back markers accident. Adrian Valles spun his BCN in front of him and he had nowhere to go apart from into the side of him. Maldonado was also involved as he plowed into the back of Valles.

As a result of the incident Valsecchi took the last point in only his fourth race of the season.

In the championship, Pantano still leads with 50 points. Eleven clear of Senna who is second with 39. Despite missing race two Buemi is still third with twenty-five points and will see losing his fourth placed grid slot as a opportunity wasted.

Written: Sun, 06 Jul 2008 20:49:01