Evans Takes Unexpected Second Win of the Season

Mitch Evans had a storming charge to victory during the sprint race, coming from seventh on the grid. He emulated the weekend’s results he got in Monza, and with him also partaking in the LMP1 rookie test tomorrow he’s stated his place for people to sit up and listen. Evans started the weekend with low expectations, considering the poor outing he had with Russian Time at the beginning of the year on this circuit. With his third place yesterday and today’s win Evans has propelled himself happily into fifth in the championship. Alike his results in the first outing in Bahrain, Stoffel Vandoorne finished second, still unable to grab the elusive double win. With only one race left for the Belgium driver in his GP2 career he will be trying especially hard to grab it in the next outing in a week’s time. Pole-sitter Alex Lynn finished off the podium.

Lynn got a good start, pulling into the lead as the rest of the field squabbled behind him. But Vandoorne and Evans made impressive starts too, going second and third respectively. As they chased down leader Lynn, Mastushita cut across in front of Haryianto’s car, giving the Indonesian driver no where to go. They made contact, with Mastushita spinning around whilst the rest of the field split to avoid the spinning ART car. A lot of the field came out of the incident with damage. The Safety Car was brought out as the debris was cleaned up, and after five laps of the safety car we were back to racing again. Matsushita, Oliver Rowland and Rene Binder were the three drivers to be taken out in the first corner incident.

When racing got going again Evans was on the charge. He made it look easy as he passed Championship-Winner Vandoorne, reeling in the gap that Lynn had pulled out in the front. By lap 11 Evans was in a position to challenge for the lead. He made an ‘old school’ move round the outside of turn one/inside of turn two with no DRS assistance to take the top step of the podium. The car just seemed to have pace that no one could keep up with as Evans pulled of into the lead. Though it wasn’t just Evans; his teammate, Artem Markelov, also had a very competitive pace, climbing the field to P4 before his tyres went off. He did slip back down the field but for a little while it looked like Russian Time were going to have their best race of the season.

De Jong and King came together as the Dutch driver tried to make a move around the outside of King and they made contact, De Jong spinning round. The incident put damage on the Racing Engineering front wing and it was almost inevitable that King would have to pit for repairs. But he did not come in. For a few laps the Brit slipped back down the grid, struggling with grip and adjusting to the altered balance. But he managed to get it back, demoting Gasly and struggling Markelov to finish P6 in the last few laps of the race. There was a solid 1.8 seconds between Evans and Vandoorne at the end of the race, with Lynn an astonishing 17 seconds behind the pair. Evans was ecstatic with the result, rushing to embrace mentor Mark Webber as soon as he got out of the car. Webber will be fighting for the WEC Driver’s title later on today, but seeing his mentee storm an amazing victory couldn’t be a better start to the day.

GP2 returns in a week’s time as the teams fly out to Abu Dhabi to rejoin F1 in the finale of the 2015 season. With the driver’s title and the constructor’s title already wrapped up there isn’t anything material to be fought for. But Vandoorne will be determined to finish the year with a double win whilst the other drivers fight to hold their championship positions or even try to climb a few places. Join us on the 27th November at £:05pm GMT when we will get underway with the final qualifying session of the season.

(Image: www.gp2series.com)

#gp2