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

Bahrain goes for new track layout

A completely unexpected piece of news popped up today, with the Bahrain GP organizers announcing this years race will not take part in the usual 5,41km layout, but rather in an “Endurance” 6,2km version of the circuit which adds a new loop:

Map of Bahrain's new layout, the old track used the shortcut from T4 to what will be now T14

This is somewhat bizarre, because the reason the organizers have given for this change is basically to accommodate the fact there will be more cars on track, 26 instead of 20. I’ve seen GP2 fields of 26 handling it without any problem whatsoever, specially given that this is the one circuit in the world that is really bloody wide, and then there’s a sea of tarmac everywhere if you happen to go out of track. And amusingly, from the maps it seems the new section is going to be the narrowest part in the circuit.

However I’m not going to cry about it, as some fans in the forums already seem to be doing. The only harm it really does is to ruin the quick S we had after the turn 4 hairpin, which was one of the few challenging parts of the circuit, but then the new section of turns 5-6-7-8 looks quite challenging as well. The fact there’s going to be more corners will also force the teams to use a setup with a little bit more downforce, which isn’t good for overtaking, but I think the difference is going to be hardly noticeable.

Teams agree final rule tweaks for 2010

As for some completely unrelated news, and because I have no better place to put this, Scuderia Toro Rosso have announced they will launch their new car at Valencia the first day of testing in the 1st of February. And let me keep the most important news to the end: the teams have agreed on approving the new points system (25-18-15-12-10-8-6-4-2-1), without agreeing to give pole position and fastest lap points (thankfully), neither agreeing to force 2 mandatory pitstops per race as previously expected. I’m quite happy about that.