UpdateF1 >> Formula 1 News > GP2: Round 2

Win and crash for Grosjean

Round two of the 2009 GP2 Series took place at the historic Monaco Grand Prix circuit. After Barwa Addax's domination of Spain, Romain Grosjean leads the championship with eighteen points, Eduardo Mortara of Arden and Jerome D'Ambrosio of DAMS are tied in second with ten points and Grosjean's team mate Vitaly Petrov is next with eight.

In the team's championship, Barwa Addax lead with twenty six points, followed by DAMS with thirteen and Arden with ten.

Feature Race:

Early on, it looked like Romain Grosjean would continue his early season domination. He extended his lead in qualifying by earning two bonus points for qualifying on pole and gave himself a huge opportunity to win the first race.

Barwa Addax team-mate Vitaly Petrov joined him on the front row to complete Barwa's success. Nico Hülkenberg lines up third for ART with Andres Zuber joining the German on the second row for FMSI.

Race one was the typical Monaco procession with most of the excitement in the steward's room after the race. Grosjean dominated the race coming home ahead of his team-mate.

Grosjean was leading Petrov as they ran in close order ahead of Hulkenberg and Di Grassi who had jumped to fourth after a great start.

Both Barwa Addax drivers put in a series of very quick laps and as Grosjean pitted one lap later than Petrov, it was that extra flying lap that gave Grosjean a huge lead to cruise victory.

The battle for third was a much closer affair, with Hülkenberg fending off Di Grassi until the pit stops, where the Racing Engineering crew edged out their ART colleagues, gifting the Brazilian third place.

Zuber finished fifth over half a minute behind Grosjean, while D'Ambrosio was sixth as the last driver within a minute of the winner. Karun Chandhok was seventh to score the first points for the brand new Ocean Racing Technology team with Javier Villa finishing eighth for Super Nova.

The real drama took place post-race as stewards penalised eight drivers with a twenty-five second penalty for cutting the Ste Devote corner on lap one. Di Grassi, Hülkenberg, Villa, Rodriguez, Mortara, Filippi, Kobayashi and Clos all received said punishment.

The penalty sees Di Grassi and Hulkenberg drop to fourth and fifth respectively, as it promotes fifth place finisher Zuber to third. Meanwhile, Javier Villa lost his eight place and sprint race pole to ART's Pastor Maldonado.

Sprint Race:

The sprint race was slightly more dramatic featuring two safety cars and a red flag, ending the race two laps early.

Ocean's Karun Chandhok jumped poleman Maldonado at the start, who then seemed to struggle to keep up with the Indian as Chandhok looked to be heading for a win. Behind the pair, D'Ambrosio was struggling in third and held off a train of Hulkenberg, Di Grassi, Zuber, Grosjean and Petrov.

Ten leps from the end however, drama unfolded in Monaco's harbour as a broken driveshaft forced Chandhok to retire from the lead, gifting first place to Maldonado. The safety car was needed to clear the car from its dangerous position.

On the restart, Maldonado jumped clear of D'Ambrosio, who still seemed to lack the pace to keep up. In the queue trailing the Belgian, Zuber came off the chicane slowly as he outbraked himself. He was able to hold his position from Grosjean but running down to Tabac, Zuber moved across to block the Frenchman.

The front wheel of Grosjean touched the rear wheel of Zuber, launching the Frenchman into the barriers at huge speed. Fortunately Grosjean was able to get out of the car unaided.

A second safety car was originally called but after two laps, with only two of the scheduled thirty to go the red flag was thrown ending the race early.

In the final classification Maldonado inherits what many will consider as a lucky win, D'Ambrosio drove the defensive race of his life to finish second with Hülkenberg completing the podium.

Di Grassi was fourth, with Zuber limping home behind the safety car in fifth with a damaged car and Petrov was sixth taking the place of his team-mate.

Despite his dramatic exit from the sprint race, Grosjean still comfortably leads the championship, extending his points tally to 31 points. Petrov and D'Ambrosio are tied for second with 18, while Maldonado moves up to fourht with 12 points.

With their drivers one and two in the championship, it is no surprise that Barwa Addax are dominating the Team's Championship. With 49 points, they hugely increase their margin on DAMS, who are second with twenty.

Next GP2 Series weekend will take place in two weeks from now, as we head towards Istanbul for the Turkish GP.

Paul Crossling

Written: Sun, 24 May 2009 13:05:01