Senna dominates Silverstone sprint
Bruno Senna atoned for his scrappy feature race performance yesterday with a polished victory in the GP2 Series sprint race at a wet Silverstone on Sunday morning
Senna, who started third, took advantage of front row man Andi Zuber's terrible start and ran second to poleman Luca Filippi until Abbey corner on the opening lap, where he took the lead.
Filippi went off at Brooklands a couple of corners later, gifting second to Lucas di Grassi.
Yesterday's feature race winner Giorgio Pantano was already up to third, but he lost a lot of time with a grassy off at Vale, dropping him into the clutches of a charging Mike Conway.
Despite constantly changing conditions, as the track dried out slightly before more rain soaked it once more, Senna was in total control until a bizarre situation on the final lap where he appeared to slow at Becketts, behind a backmarker, and was almost run into by a car he'd just lapped.
Despite losing five seconds in the confusing incident, he still won by 8.5secs over di Grassi, who had Pantano right behind him in the closing stages.
Conway dropped back to a distant fourth as his engine went off-song in the closing stages, but any danger that Vitaly Petrov would catch him ended when the Russian spun at Becketts on the final lap, and had to settle for fifth.
The final point swapped hands with five corners to go, when Kamui Kobayashi tripped over a spinning Adrian Valles at Abbey just as he was lapping him, and Pastor Maldonado hit the spinning Spaniard too in a spectacular three-car pile-up.
Kobayashi dragged his car into the pits on three wheels, but not before Davide Valsecchi, in his first race weekend since a spinal injury at Istanbul, nipped past him.
Pos Driver Team Time
1. Senna iSport International 44:29.867
2. Di Grassi Barwa Campos Team + 8.598
3. Pantano Racing Engineering + 9.420
4. Conway Trident Racing + 17.784
5. Petrov Barwa Campos Team + 23.390
6. Valsecchi Durango + 62.921
7. Kobayashi Dams + 65.887
8. Grosjean ART Grand Prix + 76.083
9. Valerio Durango + 79.835
10. Buurman Trust Team Arden + 1 lap
11. Zuber Piquet Sports + 1 lap
12. D'ambrosio Dams + 1 lap
13. Asmer FMS International + 1 lap
14. Valles BCN Competicion + 2 laps
15. Maldonado Piquet Sports + 2 laps
Retirements:
Driver Team Laps
Villa Racing Engineering 20
Rodriguez FMS International 20
Iaconelli BCN Competicion 17
Soucek Super Nova Racing 14
Filippi ART Grand Prix 8
Tung Trident Racing 3
Chandhok iSport International 0
Parente Super Nova Racing 0
Nunes DPR 0
Buemi Trust Team Arden 0
Herck DPR 0
Fastest lap: Maldonado, 1:47.801 on lap 21
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