Belgium GP2 race report

27/08/2014

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Going into the eighth round of the championship, Comma-sponsored Jolyon Palmer led Felipe Nasr of Brazil by 42 points in the 2104 GP2 series. Palmer, driving for the Le Mans, France-based DAMS team – to whom Comma is also technical partner – endured a frustrating weekend at Belgium's notoriously fickle Spa circuit over the weekend of August 23/24th, seeing Nasr bite a sizeable chunk out of his points lead as the Carlin driver finished fourth, one place ahead of him in Saturday's Feature race, and then stroke to a comfortable lights-to-flag win by over 5 seconds in Sunday's Sprint contest in which Palmer narrowly claimed the final podium position.
With a bucket full of points still available in the three remaining GP2 events at Monza in Italy, Sochi in Russia and the season finale at Yas Marina, Abu Dhabi, the margin between Palmer and Williams F1 test driver Nasr has now been narrowed to just 32 points. A winning streak by any of the next three drivers in the championship table – ART Grand Prix's McLaren F1 test driver Stoffel Vandoorne of Belgium, Trident's Johnny Cecotto and New Zealand's Mitch Evans driving for Russian Time – could yet change the whole complexion of the GP2 championship chase.
"It's all about the points" may well be the oldest cliché in championship sports......but it's none the less true. Game seriously on!

Practise & Qualifying

Unable to hit upon an ideal set-up in official practice on Friday, Palmer languished in twelfth position on the time sheets, almost six tenths of a second shy of Carlin's Julian Leal, the Columbian having posted the fastest time of 1m 57.877sec for the 7.004 kilometre Spa circuit. Cecotto was second for Trident, with Racing Engineering's Ferrari Academy driver, Raffaelle Marciello of Italy in third place. France's Nathaniel Berthon claimed fourth spot for Venezuela GP Lazarus, with team-mate Conor Daly of the USA fifth. Vandoorne was sixth, Spain's Sergio Canamasas seventh for Trident and Stephano Coletti of Monaco eighth for Racing Engineering. Palmer's DAMS team-mate, Stéphane Richelmi of Monaco and Evans rounded out the top ten. Nasr was fourteenth.
Qualifying for Saturday's Feature race restored some semblance of the GP2 norm, with Vandoorne edging Palmer by just 0.018 seconds to grab pole position for the 25 lap race. Evans and Marciello occupied the second row, with Cecotto and Leal fifth and sixth. Berthon remained in the mix, alongside Switzerland's Simon Trummer for Rapax in seventh and eighth. MP Motorsport's star rookie, Marco Sørensen of Denmark and Richeli for DAMS completed the top ten on the grid. With the top sixteen all within 1 second of pole, Nasr was still buried in the pack in eleventh place.

Feature race

True to form, Spa played its joker right on time for the main event, with rain sweeping in across the forested Ardennes hills to make it a wet race. Vandoorne got away best as the starting lights went out, while Palmer got too much wheel spin and went almost nowhere as the pack enveloped him and he had dropped to eighth by the end of the first lap. With track conditions constantly worsening, the safety car was briefly deployed before the race was red flagged to clear stranded vehicles after just three laps. Proceedings resumed - once again behind the safety car – before going 'live' on lap five, with Cecotto briefly exchanging the lead with Vandoorne and Nasr suddenly making his presence felt in fifth place behind Marciello and Berthon. Palmer benefitted from a collision ahead of him between Berthon and Trummer to move up to sixth before being the first driver to pit for a new set of wet tyres on lap 14, re-joining in ninth position. Up ahead, Marciello was the man on a charge, displacing Cecotto for second place and setting his sights for the race lead on Vandoorne.
After the pit stops played out, the two leaders were now locked in a battle of their own, a long way down the road from Cecotto and Nasr with Palmer running fifth before being overtaken by a hard charging Evans. With three laps to go, Marciello pulled a bold move on Vandoorne to take the lead at the downhill Rivage curve, drawing away to claim his maiden GP2 victory by just over 2 seconds. The order behind remained the same, with Palmer coming under threat from Russian Time's Artem Markelov who had made a penalty start from the pit lane and Hilmer's Daniel Abt in seventh and eighth positions. The final points in the top ten went to Arden's Brazilian recruit, Andre Negrao, and Dutchman Daniel De Jong for MP Motorsports.

Sprint race

Once he'd taken the lead of the race at the first corner after starting from fifth on the better side of damp grid, there was no denying Felipe Nasr a dominant victory in Sunday morning's eighteen lap Sprint race. After the reverse order starting grid had sorted itself out in the opening laps into a more familiar GP2 pattern, it was down to Cecotto, Palmer and Evans to take up the chase, but Nasr had more than enough in his armoury to repel any challenge, and he sailed home a comfortable winner by just over 5 seconds ahead of the Venezuelan who was a further 2 seconds ahead of Comma's man in third place and collecting his ninth podium of the season. Evans in fourth had a 3 second gap over Abt and Vandoorne close together in fifth and sixth positions, while Coletti and Negrao collected the final points for finishing seventh and eighth.
Next stop Monza, which Palmer took to his heart with a brace of Formula 2 victories on his debut appearance at the circuit in 2010, but where he has yet to improve on a third place GP2 podium in 2012. Whatever the circumstances, he'll be anxious to plug the slow leak in his points battle with Nasr before the GP2 caravan heads for Russia to take on the unknown challenge of Sochi.

You can follow Jolyon's race by race progress here throughout the season, and get complete race reports and results on the official GP2 Series website www.gp2series.com

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