Rio Haryanto defends strongly against the ART GP duo of Stoffel Vandoorne and Nobuharu Matsushita to claim his second victory of the season at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg.
The 24 cars were led around the dry but cool race track by reverse grid pole sitter Nick Yelloly on a very slow formation lap so that most drivers were not able to warm up their tyres properly. Unsurprisingly, the race start was chaotic: Many drivers locked up on cold tyres, and while Haryanto had a good start from second place and took the lead of the race ahead of Artem Markelov, pole sitter Yelloly had less luck: he got away slowly, and contact with Alexander Rossi saw him tumble-down the order and retire soon after the race start.
Stoffel Vandoorne was the one who profited most from the messy start: He dashed up to P3 on the first lap as drivers ahead of him dropped back due to lock-ups and collisions, and among those losing out at the start was also Vandoorne’s closest championship rival Alexander Rossi, who dropped back to 13th place from 3rd after contact with Yelloly.
The first half of the race was dominated by a battle for the lead between Haryanto and Markelov. Markelov kept pushing hard, staying within half a second of the race leader, but Haryanto remained unfazed by the pressure and did not allow Markelov to pass until the Russian eventually lost patience on lap 13. Braking very late into turn 3, he dashed up the inside of Haryanto, but he was not able to avoid contact: Having clipped the front wing of the Indonesian’s car, Markelov spun and dropped back to eighth place.
Haryanto was able to continue but he came under pressure from Vandoorne and Matsushita immediately. The ART GP duo had remained waiting behind the squabbling pair, conserving their tyres and waiting for their chance to attack. However, despite a damaged front wing, Haryanto was able to hold onto the lead until the checkered flag fell, denying Vandoorne a perfect weekend as the Belgian had to settle for second place ahead of his team-mate Matsushita. Sergey Sirotkin finished the race in fourth place ahead of Mitch Evans, Pierre Gasly, and Jordan King. Markelov held onto eighth place and denied Rossi, who had fought his way back up through the field, the last points-scoring position.
This means that Vandoorne is now leading the championship with 155 points, having increased his advantage over Rossi to 77 points. Rossi himself, sitting in second place with 78 points s now coming under pressure from Rio Haryanto, who brought his points tally up to 70 points with today’s sprint race victory.
The GP2 Series moves on to Silverstone now for the fifth round of the 2015 season which will take place in two weeks time.
Images Courtesy of GP2 Media Service
