Lynn flies to maiden GP2 Feature Race win in Hungary
- Jul 25, 2015
- 2 min read
Alex Lynn brings home his maiden GP2 Feature Race win at the Hungaroring, being joined on the podium by his teammate Pierre Gasly and Rapax driver Sergey Sirotkin on second and third position.
Again some changes in the teams’ line-ups changed the grid we knew from Silverstone: Sean Gelael, currently classified 18th in the overall championship of the World Series By Renault 3.5 running with Jagonya Ayam with Carlin , joined Julián Leal at Carlin’s GP2 team. Nicholas Latifi returned to the GP2 taking the racing seat alongside De Jong at MP Motorsport and Sergio Canamasas was brought in by Hilmer instead of Jon Lancaster. Due to continuous health problems for Zoël Amberg who should have rejoined his team Lazarus this weekend only Berthon will run for the team at Hungary.
Having have set his maiden pole position on Friday, Lynn (DAMS) managed to hold the first position when the lights went off, starting the race on medium (prime) tyres. Stoffel Vandoorne (ART Grand Prix) and Arthur Pic (Campos Racing), starting from P2 and P3, chose to go for the softer tyre compound but were both caught at the start by the second DAMS driver Gasly, on primes like Lynn and coming up from fifth position.
After a contact between Canamasas and Latifi, which let the Spaniard hit the barriers without that he got injured, the safety car got deployed in lap 3. At this point of the race the field was lead by both DAMS followed by Raffaele Marciello (Trident), Pic, Vandoorne who dropped down three positions to P5 and Sirotkin.
Two laps after the restart of the race in lap 4, Vandoorne came into the pits for his mandatory pit stop and changed to prime tyres. Unfortunately for the series’ leader his stop ended with an unsafe release, as he almost collided with Leal in pit lane. Due to that the Belgian was handed a 5 seconds time penalty.
Halfway through the race the top 9 of the drivers did not pit yet, while Vandoorne lead the rest of the field from P10. With a gap of 21.8 seconds over the Belgian Lynn pitted for option tyres in lap 22. Coming out on P12 the Briton moved up to P3 within just three laps, benefiting from other driver’s pit stops and the grip advantage of his fresh soft tyres. The two drivers ahead at this point of the race were Vandoorne and Haryanto but due to their alternative strategy both drivers were not able to hold Lynn behind running on their respectively old primes.
On lap 33 Lynn got back into the lead with Vandoorne and Haryanto defending from Gasly and Sirotkin. After having been passed by Gasly in lap 35, a thrilling last lap including an incident between Haryanto, Sirotkin and Vandoorne put the Russian on the final podium position behind the DAMS drivers while Haryanto stayed in front of the series’ leader on P5.
The top ten are completed by Jordan King (Racing Engineering), Raffaele Marciello, Nobuharu Matsushita (ART Grand Prix) on P8, which will make him start tomorrow’s Sprint Race at 10.35 am (GMT +2) from reverse grid pole, Robert Visoiu (Rapax) and Daniël De Jong (MP Motorsport).
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