Silverstone GP2: Gasly ends losing streak with feature race win
Red Bull junior driver Pierre Gasly finally ended a three-year losing streak with a perfectly judged drive to victory in the GP2 feature race at Silverstone.
Photo by: GP2 Series Media Service
The Frenchman's first win in any category since his last Formula Renault 2.0 win in 2013 came as a result of picking the optimum tyre strategy - option/prime - where the majority of the frontrunners went for the exact opposite.
It was Norman Nato who led for most of the way, the Racing Engineering man building a cushion up front after a flying start from pole, while Gasly, who started second, quickly dropped back into the pack on his option tyres.
Gasly, along with Oliver Rowland, Antonio Giovinazzi and others, therefore chose to pit early, but quickly began to make up lost ground to the leaders on primes.
Nato at this stage led from teammate Jordan King, Nicholas Latifi, Raffaele Marciello and Mitch Evans, his advantage out front generally hovering around the two second mark.
But the gap between Nato and Gasly, who made light work of the slower prime-shod cars, plummeted to just 13 seconds by the time the former came into the pits on Lap 21.
Gasly therefore found himself with a handsome advantage of six seconds over Rowland when Artem Markelov, the last man to make a stop, finally came in for options, and the Prema driver duly reeled off the remaining laps to finally seal a maiden GP2 win on his 37th attempt.
Rowland lost out in the battle for second to Giovinazzi, who bagged the runner-up spot after executing a superb outside pass on the Briton at Luffield to make it a Prema 1-2.
Behind Rowland, Evans - the quickest man in the closing stages and the best of those to start on primes - made his way up to fourth ahead of Luca Ghiotto (up from P21 on the grid) and Nobuharu Matsushita.
Nato, who had been passed by Evans some lap before, ran out of laps to clear Ghiotto and Matsushita and had to settle for seventh place, followed by King - who suffered from a slow pitstop - Marciello and Markelov.
Latifi finished just outside the points in 11th, but his DAMS teammate Alex Lynn suffered a race to forget as he was forced off the road at the start as he avoided a collision between Sean Gelael and Gustav Malja. The Briton ended up 16th.
Sergey Sirotkin also had a dismal time starting from the pitlane, suffering a puncture early on and eventually finishing down in 18th.
Race results:
Cla | Driver | Team | Laps | Time | Gap |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Pierre Gasly | Prema Powerteam | 29 | 51'39.383 | |
2 | Antonio Giovinazzi | Prema Powerteam | 29 | 51'48.805 | 9.422 |
3 | Oliver Rowland | MP Motorsport | 29 | 51'50.473 | 11.090 |
4 | Mitch Evans | Campos Racing | 29 | 52'01.050 | 21.667 |
5 | Luca Ghiotto | Trident | 29 | 52'03.974 | 24.591 |
6 | Nobuharu Matsushita | ART Grand Prix | 29 | 52'04.548 | 25.165 |
7 | Norman Nato | Racing Engineering | 29 | 52'04.857 | 25.474 |
8 | Jordan King | Racing Engineering | 29 | 52'05.034 | 25.651 |
9 | Raffaele Marciello | RUSSIAN TIME | 29 | 52'11.140 | 31.757 |
10 | Artem Markelov | RUSSIAN TIME | 29 | 52'12.498 | 33.115 |
11 | Nicholas Latifi | DAMS | 29 | 52'13.603 | 34.220 |
12 | Marvin Kirchhofer | Carlin | 29 | 52'13.792 | 34.409 |
13 | Sergio Canamasas | Carlin | 29 | 52'17.281 | 37.898 |
14 | Arthur Pic | Rapax | 29 | 52'21.993 | 42.610 |
15 | Jimmy Eriksson | Arden International | 29 | 52'34.588 | 55.205 |
16 | Alex Lynn | DAMS | 29 | 52'35.987 | 56.604 |
17 | Nabil Jeffri | Arden International | 29 | 52'36.873 | 57.490 |
18 | Sergey Sirotkin | ART Grand Prix | 29 | 52'41.479 | 1'02.096 |
19 | Daniel de Jong | MP Motorsport | 29 | 53'03.044 | 1'23.661 |
20 | Philo Paz Armand | Trident | 29 | 53'19.147 | 1'39.764 |
21 | Sean Gelael | Campos Racing | 28 | 52'39.053 | 1 Lap |
22 | Gustav Malja | Rapax | 28 | 53'20.967 | 1 Lap |
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