Pla Overjoyed with Tough Win
Olivier Pla was ecstatic to become the seventh GP2 winner this season, after withstanding pressure throughout the second race at Silverstone

Pla led away from pole put was under pressure all through the race, initially from Clivio Piccione and then later from Scott Speed. Pla won the race by half a second over Speed, with Championship leader Heikki Kovalainen and Nico Rosberg just behind the American.
When asked to describe the event after the race, Pla laughed and said: "A lot of pressure! Before the safety car it was okay - I could manage the gap to Piccione, but after the safety car I began to move the car and had a big degradation of my tyres, so that's the reason why I came back a bit to the others.
"But I just tried to stay very concentrated and to make no mistakes. And it's really good because of the results in Monaco and Barcelona, so it's a fantastic result."
Pla has suffered a lot of poor luck of late - his DPR team were quick early in the season but have seemingly slipped back of late, while Pla himself has had a number of off-track excursions in recent races, most notably in Monaco and Barcelona.
After this bad luck, today's win was like a balm for the genial Frenchman: "Yeah, absolutely - I was so happy for every mechanic, for everybody on the team - this win is for all of them. It is fantastic!
"For sure it's a very good victory for me, and very good for the team. And I hope that it's the beginning of the season for us now."
About this article
Series | FIA F2 |
Author | David Cameron |
Pla Overjoyed with Tough Win
Trending
Was Formula 2’s radical format switch a success?
Going into the 2021 Formula 2 season the biggest talking point wasn’t about any drivers or teams, but the new race weekend format. Created partly out of financial necessity but also to spice up the action, the Bahrain opener provided a snapshot of the positives and negatives to come
Why 2021 is make-or-break for the driver F1 needs
He was tipped for glory in FIA Formula 2 last year, but was hampered by reliability woes at inopportune moments. Guanyu Zhou knows he won't get too many more chances if he is to become China's first F1 driver, with fierce competition within the ranks of Alpine's junior stable
How Schumacher Jr earned his Haas F1 chance
Michael Schumacher may have won seven Formula 1 titles, but he didn't even compete for a crown at the second tier. Son Mick put that right in 2020, and proved to Ferrari that he was deserving of a shot at motorsport's elite category in 2021
The quintet giving Ferrari a tough decision to make
The Ferrari Driver Academy earned a podium sweep in the first Formula 2 race of the new decade in Austria last weekend. The battle between 'the FDA five' is set to be one of the major subplots of the season, but who has the best F1 prospects for 2021?
The Williams junior determined to prove Red Bull wrong
Dropped by his team in Japan and by Red Bull, Dan Ticktum's single-seater career seemed to be over last summer. But now he's on the Formula 2 grid with the reigning champion team, and he's a new protege of Williams. How did that happen?
The controversial weekend that ended an American's dream in Europe
OPINION: In the latest in our series of features looking back the recently concluded 2010s, we recall one of the many sagas of the 2018 Formula 2 season, which featured unusual fines and an unsavoury clash between team-mates
The year Leclerc fully revealed his star status
In the latest feature in our series looking back on the 2010s, we revisit Charles Leclerc's sensational Formula 2 season - where he strode among on-track highs and lows, as well as tragedy away from motorsport, to earn a place on the Formula 1 grid
Why F1 is no longer ignoring its feeder series
After the MotoGP-style Formula 1 support ladder was fully united for 2019, Bruno Michel and Ross Brawn share their views on the current state of Formula 2 and FIA Formula 3 and explain why investment at junior levels should boost the top tier