Luca Filippi celebrated his 100th GP2 Series start with a win at the Nurburgring
Luca Filippi celebrated his 100th start in the GP2 Series by winning at the Nurburgring on Saturday
The category veteran, who switched to Coloni this weekend after being replaced at Super Nova by Adam Carroll, jumped early race leader Charles Pic during the pitstops and never looked back from there.
The Addax driver hung onto the back of the Italian for a few laps, before Filippi settled down and pulled away to win by more than five seconds.
Pic couldn't relax too much behind him though, as championship leader Romain Grosjean was lurking throughout the final stint in third place.
Grosjean will be relatively happy considering that he extended his championship lead, as his closest challengers Giedo van der Garde and Sam Bird finished behind him.
The DAMS drivers race didn't get off to the smoothest of starts though, as he lost out to Jules Bianchi on the opening lap and had to capitalise on a slow stop for the ART driver to get back into a podium place.
Bianchi then came home a lonely fourth, while Marcus Ericsson pinched fifth from van der Garde on the penultimate lap.
The scrap for the front row of Sunday's reversed-grid race got particularly lively in the closing stages, as Alvaro Parente, Dani Clos and Sam Bird fought over positions seven to nine.
Parente held onto seventh when he cut the chicane on lap 28, and on the following lap Bird was able to snatch eighth from Clos at Turn 1. Clos re-took the race two pole at the same place a lap later, and both were promoted when Parente was given a drive through for not respecting the track limits.
From there the fight settled down, with Bird just having to keep an eye on Fabio Leimer who dropped out of the points during the pitstops for the last couple of laps to hang onto eighth.
Leimer subsequently found himself in trouble with the stewards, as he was placed under investigation for clashes with points contenders Adam Carroll and Luiz Razia as he made his way back through the field, and was ultimately excluded.
Results - 34 laps: Pos Driver Team Time/Gap 1. Luca Filippi Coloni 1h01m06.975s 2. Charles Pic Addax + 5.558s 3. Romain Grosjean DAMS + 6.877s 4. Jules Bianchi ART + 33.491s 5. Marcus Ericsson iSport + 37.716s 6. Giedo van der Garde Addax + 41.146s 7. Dani Clos Racing Engineering + 45.977s 8. Sam Bird iSport + 46.461s 9. Fabio Leimer Rapax + 47.075s 10. Rodolfo Gonzalez Trident + 48.452s 11. Johnny Cecotto Ocean + 1m12.166s 12. Michael Herck Coloni + 1m12.581s 13. Esteban Gutierrez ART + 1m13.285s 14. Davide Valsecchi AirAsia + 1m13.447s 15. Julian Leal Rapax + 1m20.824s 16. Adam Carroll Super Nova + 1m23.404s 17. Fairuz Fauzy Super Nova + 1m25.492s 18. Max Chilton Carlin + 1m26.566s 19. Josef Kral Arden + 1m31.615s 20. Jolyon Palmer Arden + 1 lap 21. Alvaro Parente Carlin + 2 laps Retirements: Luiz Razia AirAsia 29 laps Stefano Coletti Trident 28 laps Christian Vietoris Racing Engineering 1 lap Pal Varhaug DAMS 0 laps Kevin Mirocha Ocean 0 laps
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