UpdateF1 >> Formula 1 News > GP2: Round 1

Grosjean takes early lead

The opening round of the 2009 GP2 championship began in Barcelona, with twenty-six drivers heading into the season all hoping to follow Giorgio Pantano to the championship and hopefully into Formula One in 2010.

After winning the GP2 Asia Championship in Bahrain just two weeks ago, at topping the majority of the winter tests, DAMS driver Kamui Kobayashi started the season as one of the pre-season favourites but with half the drivers on the grid harbouring realistic chances of winning the title it is going to be a very close season.

It was Romain Grosjean who hit the ground running and dominated practise. The Addax, formally known as Campos, driver has moved to the champion team from former champions ART Grand Prix and on his first duty lapped the circuit 0.644 seconds faster than his Russian team-mate Vitally Petrov.

Third place was Formula Three Euroseries graduate Eduardo Mortara for Arden, with last seasons form driver Lucas Di Grassi ending the session fourth for Racing Engineering, the reigning drivers champion team after he left Campos over the winter.

In qualifying Grosjean maintained his pace and took the first pole position, and more importantly the first championship point of the season. He will be joined on the front row by Di Grassi after the two were separated by 0.021 seconds, making for a very interesting start to the season. Not only are they fighting over a GP2 race victory and the early championship lead, the are also fighting for the affections of Flavio Briatore who may have a seat opening up for one of his two test drivers later in the season.

Third on the grid is Petrov and he is joined on the second row by Formula Three Euroseries Champion Nico Hulkenberg who makes the step up with ART Grand Prix. The new GP2 Asia champion, Kobayashi had a session to forget and struggled to set on the twenty second fastest time.

Grosjean won the first feature race of the season conformably from his team-mate after their main rivals Di Grassi and Hulkenberg faded during the race.

The drama started even before the race began, as Javier Villa who is now at Super Nova rather than Racing Engineering where he has spent the last three years. When he pulled away from his garage in the pit lane there was a flash fire coming from behind his engine cover. The fire was extinguished on the grid with no obvious ill affects in performance.

Grosjean made a great start and was able to out drag Di Grassi down in to turn one, but in contrast Hulkenberg dropped from fourth all the way down to eighteenth, but is comeback drive would be a brilliant demonstration of talent for fans unaware of the Germans ability. When he got going he was just ahead of Kobayashi, the two drivers would then spend the rest of the afternoon coming through the pack together.

On the opening lap both Petrov and DAMS driver Jerome D'Ambrosio passed Di Grassi to start his slide down the field. He continued to be under pressure from Luca Fillippi who after his join season with ART Grand Prix and Arden last year is now driving for Super Nova. Fillippi finally found a way past Di Grassi on lap thirteen.

Grosjean was the first of the front runners to make his pit stop, it was good and he came out just behind Hulkenberg who had already risen to eighth in just sixteen laps, on a circuit that Formula One drivers say it is very difficult to pass on.

He reclaimed the lead just two laps later as the rest of the front runners pitted almost together.

After the pit stops Pastor Maldonado was the man on the move. After being slow early a train had formed behind Di Grassi and Maldonado was moving his way through the carriages one by one.

The lines he was taking threw the corners were distracting to the drivers behind and just after he had passed Di Grassi, Alvaro Pantene driving for the new Tiago Monterio owned Ocean Racing Technology team, made a mistake and ran over the top of Di Grassi’s car, and both were collected by the unlucky Diego Nunez formerly of DPR but now driving for iSport. This brought out the safety car.

This closed up the field and gave a three lap sprint to the flag. There were several attempted overtaking moves but none that were able to stick as Grosjean crossed the line as the winner followed by team-mate Petrov.

D'Ambrosio completed the podium, with Fillippi holding of a charging Maldonado to keep the Venezuelan down in fifth place, Mortara and iSports World Series by Renault Champion Giedo Van Der Garde, were two of the cars who got themselves involved in the Di Grassi train putting them in sixth and seventh with Kobayashi who came through the field to claim eighth and beat Hulkenberg to the final point, and pole for the sprint race.

On Sunday Romain Grosjean had the best race as he rose from eight following his Saturday win to finish second, but all the headlines go to Eduardo Mortara who on his debut held off the Frenchman to take his first GP2 win.

Mortara got a good start and passed Kobayashi right from the start with D'Ambrosio following him through. Grosjean has the best start was up to fourth by turn one following third place Van Der Garde.

He then passed Van Der Garde and D'Ambrosio in consecutive laps to take second and set of on his race long chase of Mortara but he never really got close enough to consider making a more.

D’Ambrosio was third after being passed and Van Der Garde was fourth. After being left at the start Kobayashi was down to fifth and both has a very quiet race as they just ran a couple of seconds apart to finish in those positions

The battle for the final point in sixth was the main attraction of the race. Fillippi held it but he had Petrov, Hulkenberg and Maldonado all over the back of him.

Maldonado was the man on the move again, first barging his way past Petrov when the Russian made a mistake and Hulkenberg also pushed his way through.

Maldonado was then on the back of Fillippi but the Italian had used all the goodness in his tyres defending early in the race and with three laps to go he was a sitting duck for Maldonado top pass and take the final point.

Hulkenberg was also sniffing around the back of Fillippi to try and take seventh but he was punted off at the last corner of the penultimate lap and lost all his hopes of scoring points on his GP2 debut weekend.

After his great weekend of a pole, feature race win and sprint race second place, Grosjean leads the championship with eighteen points. Mortara and D'Ambrosio tied in second with ten points each and Petrov is the next man with eight.

In the teams’ championship, Campos lead with twenty six points, DAMS are second with thirteen and Arden are third with ten.

Written: Sun, 10 May 2009 20:32:45