Rossi storms to his first win of the season in Spa's GP2 Sprint Race

Alexander Rossi wins race 2 in Belgium, crossing the finish line 1.5 seconds ahead of his Racing Engineering teammate Jordan King. Overtaking yesterday’s race winner and local hero Stoffel Vandoorne only in the second last lap, Mitch Evans finished 3rd.

Another (unusual) sunny day at the circuit at Spa-Francorchamps welcomed the GP2 grid on this Sunday morning for the 18 lap long Sprint Race. The second race of the weekend does, as always, not contain a mandatory pit stop like Saturday’s Feature Race and points are only given for top 8 finishes.

King started the race from reverse grid pole ahead of Nathanaël Berthon (Lazarus), Rossi on third position and Evans on fourth. While Berthon had a poor start giving Rossi the opportunity to move up to P2 immediately, King managed to hold the lead in turn 1 as well as all over Eau Rouge. At Les Combes though, the Briton ran wide under pressure from his teammate and the experienced Rossi took the chance and lead the race from this moment on. Championship leader Vandoorne (ART Grand Prix) rushed through the field over the first three laps, moving up four positions up to P4 behind the Racing Engineering cars and Berthon, but with Evans (Russian Time) glued to the back of his car.

All through the field fighting groups showed off some amazing racing. At the top Rossi, King, Berthon, Vandoorne and Evans all had the opportunity of a podium finish, as the latter only drove 2.6 seconds behind the leading American. Then Berthon began to lose pace and in lap 10 he got overtaken for P3 by Vandoorne, who immediately pulled a gap of 1.4 seconds between him and the Frenchman, before also Evans passed the Lazarus driver two laps later.

A virtual safety car period caused by Arthur Pic (Campos Racing) ending up in the gravel in lap 13 became the crucial factor in the fight for the final podium position. Back under green flag conditions in lap 14, a huge lock-up by Vandoorne made the gap between him and the Racing Engineering cars increase, while Evans closed up to the local hero and forced him to very defensive driving. Evans’ teammate and yesterday’s third Artem Markelov moved up to P5 by overtaking Berthon one lap before the Kiwi made a successful move with the help of DRS on Vandoorne in lap 17.

Rossi and King brought home their team’s 1-2-finish with a 1.7 seconds gap over Evans on P3. Vandoorne made some more important championship points finishing 4th and leaves his home race comfortably leading the classification with 233 points and an advantage of 105 points over Rossi (128 points), who moved back up to P2.

Behind Markelov on P5 the last drivers to score points in Spa’s Sprint Race are fellow Russian Sergey Sirotkin (Rapax), Berthon and Alex Lynn (DAMS).

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