UpdateF1 >> Formula 1 News > GP2 Asia: Round 6

The last race of season

Bahrain marked the last stop for the 2008–2009 GP2 Asia Series Championship. Before the race Kamui Kobayashi leads the championship for DAMS, with Davide Valsecchi in second for Durango, the gap between them is thirteen points, and entering the final event they were the only two drives capable of winning the championship.

In practise Diego Nunez topped the timing sheets for Piquet Sports, he may have topped the sheets but he was not the fastest. He actually shared the fastest time with his team-mate Roldan Rodriquez of 1 minute 44.290 seconds, with the Piquet Sports drivers only separated by virtue of Nunez setting the time first.

The Piquet Sports domination of practise turned into DAMS domination of practise. Jerome D'Ambrosio was fastest but he had to take a ten place grid penalty due to an incident in the last round at Sepang. This handed pole, and the two bonus points, to Kobayashi with Rodriquez joining him on the front row.

Qualifying practically gave Kobayashi the title with his pole extending his lead to fifteen points and rival Valsecchi only qualifying down in eighth place.

In the feature race the inevitable happened, Nunez won the race but it was Kobayashi who made all the head lines by following in the wheel-tracks of Romain Grosjean by becoming GP2 Asia champion.

Kobayashi made a terrible start allowing the two Piquet Sports cars through, with Nunez ahead of Rodriquez.

With the two Piquet Sports cars gone in to a lead that they would never lose, the race was on for third. Kobayashi looked good value for it after an early pit stop undid most of the damage that his poor start had done.

That was until D'Ambrosio recovering from his ten place grid penalty was flying in the closing stages. He came up behind Kobayashi and instead of fighting with his team-mate the Japanese driver allowed his Belgian counterpart to pass easy, knowing that Valsecchi was only in sixteenth place and the championship was his.

Valsecchi also made a poor start dropping a few places from his eighth position grid start, and he would never even get back into the top ten. A slow pit stop from his Durango team dropped him even further down the order.

Behind the Piquet Sports and DAMS domination of the top four places, the best of the rest was Giedo Van Der Garde of iSport in fifth, with Sakon Yamamoto of ART Grand Prix finishing sixth, after leading for a couple of laps due to a late pit stop.

Davide Rigon, who made a name for himself during 2008 with his shock success in the new Superleague Formula Championship, finished seventh for Trident after he too made a late pit stop and used his fresh tyres to pass Karun Chandhok of Ocean Racing Technology and Luiz Razia of Arden in the closing laps to push them down to ninth and eighth respectively giving the Arden driver pole for the sprint race.

Going into the sprint race there were four drivers in with a shot of becoming the series vice-champion. Rodriguez with his second place had thirty five points, Valsecchi thirty four, D’Ambrosio thirty and Petrov twenty eight.

In the sprint race it was Razia who held his nerve through a safety car period from a five car first lap crash to claim the final GP2 Asia Series win of the season.

The five cars out were Rodriguez, Chandhok, Valsecchi, Rodolfo Gonzalez of FMS and Pastor Maldonado of ART. The incident wiped out half of the drivers fighting to be vice champion. Rodriquez held it going into the race with Valsecchi just behind thus ending all of Valsecchi’s hopes of taking it.

With Petrov starting down in nineteenth place after the first lap it appeared that it was a battle between Rodriquez and D'Ambrosio. With Rodriquez out of the race D'Ambrosio had a free run however he needed to score six points to get it.

And he did it. He finished second in the race behind Razia to earn himself five points but then claimed the bonus point he needed to make his total for the race equal six.

For a long time it looked as if he was going to fail in his mission. After the safety car he was down in fourth place moving up from sixth on the grid and stuck behind third placed Yamamoto, while Razia and second placed Rigon made the break.

When he finally got past Yamamoto he set after Rigon, who by now was a long way up the road. In the closing stages, after already setting the fastest lap he closed in on Rigon and passed him, but by now Razia was too for up the road for D'Ambrosio to contemplate attempting to catch.

Rigon was demoted to third, which is where he finished, Yamamoto finished fourth followed home by his countryman and the new champion – Kobayashi with Nunez finishing sixth to claim the final point of the season.

In the championship, it was a DAMS domination season. Kobayashi ended up with fifty six points and was twenty head of D'Ambrosio who finished second with thirty six. Despite going into the weekend with a shot of taking the title after a very poor weekend Valsecchi could not even hang on to third place after Rodriquez scored thirty five points.

Valsecchi ended up fourth with thirty four points. Petrov finished fifth with twenty eight, Nico Hulkenberg was sixth with twenty seven points despite only taking part in two of the six events for ART Grand Prix. GP2 newcomer Sergio Perez was seventh with twenty six, iSport bound Nunes was eighth with twenty four, Yamamoto ninth with thirteen and Javier Villa of Super Nova rounding out the top ten in the championship with twelve points.

All the teams and drivers now head back to Europe for the start of the GP2 Main Series which starts in just two weeks in Spain as a support to the Formula One Spanish Grand Prix.

Written: Sun, 26 Apr 2009 20:46:18