Vandoorne flies to home victory in thrilling GP2 Feature Race

Stoffel Vandoorne wins the first GP2 race after the summer break, seeing the chequered flag 9.9 seconds before Arthur Pic on P2. Artem Markelov completed the podium in Spa-Francorchamps, making his maiden GP2 podium having started the race 22nd.

Series’ leader Vandoorne topped both Friday sessions in Belgium, coming out of the summer break with 194 championship points and an advantage of 85 points over championship second Rio Haryanto with 109 points. After Hungary on third position was Racing Engineering’s Alexander Rossi (105 points), closely followed by GP2 Rookie Sergey Sirotkin (Rapax, 103 points).

GP2 returnee Oliver Rowland (MP Motorsport), currently leading the WSR 3.5 championship, started the Feature Race from second position, ahead of Sirotkin and Jordan King (Racing Engineering) on the 3rd and 4th starting position.

Rather slow starts from Vandoorne and Rowland made Sirotkin lead into turn 1 but breaking issues made the Russian go wide while Rowland made contact with Nobuharu Matsushita (ART Grand Prix) coming up from P5 and local hero Vandoorne got back the lead for the opening lap.

Alexander Rossi (Racing Engineering) made up six positions in lap 1, having started 8th coming up to P2 ahead of Mitch Evans (Russian Time), Sirotkin and King.

In lap 5 a high speed collision between Pierre Gasly (DAMS) and Daniël De Jong (MP Motorsport) made the latter fly off track at Blanchimont followed by a huge impact. As a consequence the safety car was deployed and Vandoorne used the conditions to make his mandatory pit stop for prime tyres, having started the race on options. At this point of the race Markelov already came up to P11.

After 9 completed laps the race got red flagged. De Jong was extracted from the car and transfered to an ambulance before having been taken to hospital for assessment. He has constantly been conscious.

During red flag periods drivers are allowed to change tyres, but this change does not count as their one obligatory pit stop in race 1, so every driver changing tyres during the break of the race still has to come in under yellow or green flag conditions. At 16:30 local time (GMT+2) the race was restarted with Rossi, on a fresh set of option tyres, in the lead.

The American hold P1 at the restart, building up a gap between him and the following Evans over the next laps. In lap 10 a contact between Matsushita and Nick Yelloly (Hilmer Motorsport) caused the retirement of both cars. Four laps later, Vandoorne as highest classified driver of the ones who already made their obligatory pit stops, already came up to P6 by overtaking Raffaele Marciello (Trident).

The Belgian then easily moved up further in the classification as every driver who started the race on prime tyres came in for fresh rubber in the pit window from lap 15 to lap 19. Coming out on P14 in lap 17, Rossi started rushing through the field up to P5 behind Julián Leal (Carlin), always in a pack with Evans one position behind. In the very last corner both drivers went wide as Evans was edging Rossi out of track fighting for the position. This incident, amongst many other during this Feature Race, got investigated by the stewards.

On the top of the field, Stoffel Vandoorne brought home the win with a comfortable gap over Pic on second position, while Markelov who rather surprisingly due to a smart strategy and some good racing came up all the way from P22 had to defend his maiden podium position from Leal until the very end of the race, crossing the finish line just 0.2 seconds ahead of the Carlin driver.

Finishing the race on P8, Jordan King will start tomorrow’s Sprint Race from reverse grid pole.

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