Van der Garde scores first GP2 win
An excellent drive under constant pressure earned iSport's Giedo van der Garde his maiden GP2 Series win in today's sprint race at the Hungaroring
Van der Garde spent the entire race being chased by Super Nova's Luca Filippi, with the gap between the pair never stretching to more than a few tenths of a second.
He also had to survive a restart late in the race when the safety car was brought out to allow the track to be cleaned after Ricardo Teixeira spun and dragged most of the gravel trap back onto the circuit with him, but the Dutchman kept his cool, took advantage of the tight Hungaroring layout, and led Filippi across the line by a scant 0.3 seconds.
The fight for the top positions was close all the way through, with Filippi's team-mate Javier Villa running in third for most of the distance before spinning back to fifth, paving the way for Lucas di Grassi and Romain Grosjean to fight it out for the final podium place.
Grosjean's best chance came on the restart, but di Grassi (Racing Engineering) was able to defend the Addax driver's attack and held on to third; the top four cars being covered by just 1.6s at the finish.
Davide Rigon's hopes of capitalising on pole were dashed early when he was beaten into the first corner by van der Garde and then harpooned a couple of corners later by ART's Pastor Maldonado. The Venezuelan was dealt a drive-through penalty although that was little consolation to Trident driver Rigon, whose race was over. Maldonado was also destined for an early shower after he spun off the track immediately following his penalty.
Series leader Nico Hulkenberg (ART) just missed out on the final point by finishing seventh; that honour instead going to Alvaro Parente, whose sixth place salvalaged something from what was otherwise a disappointing weekend for Ocean Racing Technology.
Pos Driver Team Time/Gap 1. Giedo van der Garde iSport 44m17.552s 2. Luca Filippi Super Nova + 0.385s 3. Lucas di Grassi Racing Engineering + 1.078s 4. Romain Grosjean Addax + 1.699s 5. Javier Villa Super Nova + 2.093s 6. Alvaro Parente Ocean + 3.461s 7. Nico Hulkenberg ART + 3.748s 8. Kamui Kobayashi DAMS + 4.089s 9. Davide Valsecchi Durango + 4.820s 10. Karun Chandhok Ocean + 10.341s 11. Dani Clos Racing Engineering + 11.731s 12. Vitaly Petrov Addax + 11.822s 13. Roldan Rodriguez Piquet + 12.353s 14. Edoardo Mortara Arden + 13.112s 15. Diego Nunes iSport + 13.662s 16. Sergio Perez Arden + 15.157s 17. Andreas Zuber Fisichella + 21.727s 18. Franck Perera DPR + 22.046s 19. Ricardo Teixeira Trident + 25.285s 20. Nelson Panciatici Durango + 39.825s Retirements: Alberto Valerio Piquet 26 laps Jerome D'Ambrosio DAMS 19 laps Luiz Razia Fisichella 18 laps Pastor Maldonado ART 9 laps Davide Rigon Trident 0 laps Michael Herck DPR 0 laps
Be part of the Autosport community
Join the conversationShare Or Save This Story
Subscribe and access Autosport.com with your ad-blocker.
From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.
Top Comments