GP2 Asia at Abu Dhabi last weekend

Reading Buxton’s blog yesterday reminded me that I watched the GP2 Asia races at Abu Dhabi last weekend, and forgot to talk about them.

The first race had Charles Pic of Arden on pole, but he lost the advantage in the first lap with the iSport duo of Turvey and Valsecchi escaping ahead of him. Turvey would lead the pack for almost the entire race, but for a short moment after the pitstops when his team-mate passed him – only for Turvey to surprise him back and re-take the lead in the very same lap! iSport ended with a 1-2, Oliver Turvey getting his first GP2 race win, Valsecchi extending his championship lead, and Jules Bianchi finishing 3rd after an impressive debut performance for ART. The Qi-Meritus duo of Filippi and Rossi made for another interesting sub-plot of the race, both starting from the back despite showing pace in qualifying, and climbing through the field into the points. Filippi however ran out of fuel when he was on course for a 4th place, but Rossi did well to finish 6th.

Valsecchi will almost certainly be champion after another win and a podium in Abu Dhabi

The second race saw Max Chilton take pole for Ocean Racing thanks to the reverse grid. He started poorly however, letting Herck, Rossi, Ricci and Valsecchi get ahead of him, and soon we had the incredible vision of DPR taking a temporary 1-2 with Michael Herck and Giacomo Ricci at the top of the field – surely a first in the team’s history in GP2? Valsecchi harassed both for most of the race, got past Ricci at lap 15 and finally past Herck 2 laps from the end, with some ease. Valsecchi got a huge championship lead with this win (he has 36 points, closest challengers being Turvey with 16 and Rossi with 10), and DPR will be very pleased with the 2nd and 3rd places their drivers achieved.

As in the first race, there was someone keeping the spectators entertained by overtaking drivers everywhere – this man was Jules Bianchi. The frenchman started from the pitlane after stalling on the grid, and made a sensational comeback all the way up to 7th, in a short dry race without pitstops! He fell just short of getting a points position as he looked at the back of Max Chilton’s car while crossing the finish line. The following video is a compilation of Bianchi’s best moments through the weekend:

I haven’t seen this sort of ballsy passing in GP2 ever since Lewis Hamilton! Sensational stuff. Bianchi is not a regular in this championship but will do the main series with ART and will be looking at winning it on his rookie season, as did Rosberg, Hamilton and Hulkenberg in previous years.

Meanwhile Davide Valsecchi should become champion of the short and somewhat uncompetitive GP2 Asia championship, for all its worth. He will stick with the very competent iSport team for Europe (as will the rookie Oliver Turvey) and it remains to be seen whether he can make a title challenge there – that didn’t work for his predecessors, Grosjean and Kobayashi, but they still made their way into F1 afterwards. Whenever people talk of Valsecchi I remember the 2007 World Series of Renault season – the portuguese Filipe Albuquerque was his team-mate, and scored twice as many points despite having less experience than him. I wonder where would Albuquerque be now if he had been given the same chances to develop his talent as Valsecchi had…