Bianchi and Parente shine in Bahrain qualy

GP2 Asia is racing tomorrow and Saturday on Bahrain, today was the qualifying session. Jules Bianchi again shown an excellent degree of adaptation to GP2 machines by putting his ART car on pole, albeit by a mere 0.004 seconds over championship leader Davide Valsecchi. The experienced Luca Filippi and Javier Villa will divide the second row – both also putting times within half a tenth of Bianchi in what must’ve been a very entertaining session.

This is Jules Bianchi. Take note of this name as you'll hear it a lot in the coming years.

Portuguese Álvaro Parente made a great comeback to GP2 putting his Coloni in 5th place, a rare sight for the italian squad. There are still no news as for what he will do during the main season, with the rumours around mentioning either a seat in Superleague Formula or in GT racing. If those are indeed the options I am hoping he’ll do Superleague as that still has a good degree of visibility, whereas GT would certainly mean the end of his open-wheel career. But unfortunately the Superleague rumours are a couple weeks old and might not mean much anymore.

Race 1 tomorrow is at the slightly inconvenient time of 9:40 AM, live on Eurosport 2.

Qualy times from Autosport:

Pos Driver Team Time Gap
1. Jules Bianchi ART 1m43.474s
2. Davide Valsecchi iSport 1m43.478s + 0.004s
3. Javier Villa Arden 1m43.519s + 0.045s
4. Luca Filippi Meritus 1m43.523s + 0.049s
5. Alvaro Parente Coloni 1m43.714s + 0.240s
6. Oliver Turvey iSport 1m43.818s + 0.344s
7. Giacomo Ricci DPR 1m43.918s + 0.444s
8. Christian Vietoris DAMS 1m44.086s + 0.612s
9. Charles Pic Arden 1m44.172s + 0.698s
10. Sergio Perez Addax 1m44.246s + 0.772s
11. Sam Bird ART 1m44.253s + 0.779s
12. Edoardo Piscopo DAMS 1m44.338s + 0.864s
13. Max Chilton Addax 1m44.617s + 1.143s
14. Michael Herck DPR 1m44.671s + 1.197s
15. Alexander Rossi Meritus 1m44.713s + 1.239s
16. Yelmer Buurman Ocean 1m44.724s + 1.250s
17. Vladimir Arabadzhiev Rapax 1m44.759s + 1.285s
18. Adrian Zaugg Trident 1m44.781s + 1.307s
19. Daniele Zampieri Rapax 1m45.079s + 1.605s
20. Will Bratt Coloni 1m45.320s + 1.846s
21. Fabio Leimer Ocean 1m45.371s + 1.897s
22. Josef Kral Super Nova 1m45.424s + 1.950s
23. Jake Rosenzweig Super Nova 1m45.980s + 2.506s
24. Plamen Kralev Trident 1m47.243s + 3.769s

Williams signs Bottas for the future

Besides McLaren’s car, another important news on the F1 world today was the signing of finnish rising star Valtteri Bottas by Williams for a testing/reserve seat. Valtteri, 20 years old, has been doing car racing for 3 years and his performance has been very impressive: he started out in 2007 in the Northern European Formula Renault 2.0 championship (NEC) and was 3rd in it, getting 2 podiums in his very first race weekend and finishing the season with 2 wins. The following year he stayed in the NEC and utterly dominated it with 12 wins in 16 races (something the portuguese will remember as “our” António Felix da Costa was his team-mate and finished 2nd to Bottas in the championship, in a learning year), and at the same time did the more prestigious FRenault 2.0 Eurocup – winning the championship as well, with a small advantage over aussie Daniel Ricciardo.

Bottas driving his F3 car on the way to a Masters victory in Zandvoort

Last season he moved to the F3 Euroseries, which is one of the most competitive categories below F1 and has been feeding many drivers to it for years, driving for the leading team ART. He was 3rd and couldn’t match his team-mate Jules Bianchi’s superb pace over the year, but that was quite okay as you couldn’t expect more from a rookie season; Bottas won the most important race of the season anyway, the F3 Masters. He will stay there for another F3 season in 2010 and at the moment you’d have to tip him as the big favourite for the title.

The association with Williams will do him good. In the last few years the team has invested in Nico Rosberg and Nico Hulkenberg when youngsters (both ART drivers in the junior series!) and properly trained them all the way up to giving them a Formula 1 race seat. This guy is likely to go the same path.