While Richie Stanaway scored his second GP2 race win ahead of Rio Haryanto and Raffaele Marciello; however, all eyes were on the man who finished in fourth place: after dominating all season long, Stoffel Vandoorne sealed his championship victory in today’s sprint race in Sochi.
The initial situation was simple: Vandoorne needed to finish ahead of closest championship rival Alexander Rossi to claim the championship victory, and after starting and staying two positions ahead of Rossi, the Belgian was never under serious threat.
Just like in the Feature race the day before, it was a hectic first lap: Pole sitter Arthur Pic came under pressure from Richie Stanaway and Rio Haryanto who had started the race from P2 and P4 respectively, and the two made their way past the Frenchman just in time before the safety car came out. It was once again turn three that claimed victims: This time it was Sergey Sirotkin who caused the pile-up after tapping Dean Stoneman into a spin. Rene Binder was forced to brake down hard to avoid the Brit blocking his path; however, Marlon Stockinger misjudged his own braking and hit the Austrian from behind, ending both their races. While Stoneman was able to continue without problems, Sirotkin managed to limp back to the pits with a broken front wing and front left suspension damage, and was handed a penalty afterwards when he was able to continue his race.
When the track was clear again, Stanaway and Haryanto were able to pull away quickly at the front, while the slower Pic came under pressure from Pierre Gasly, Raffaele Marciello and Stoffel Vandoorne. Pic was able to withstand the attacks for some laps; and Gasly soon made an error and dropped back between the championship rivals Vandoorne and Rossi. The Campos Racing driver then came under attack of Marciello and Vandoorne, and both made short work of the struggling Frenchman so that now there were two drivers between Vandoorne and Rossi.
Towards the end of the race the battles heated up again: Under pressure from Rossi, the still struggling Pic locked up and had to make a detour through the run-off area which dropped him outside the points. At the front, Stanaway began to slow down so that Hayranto was able to catch up, and Marciello had to defend his podium position from Vandoorne with tooth and nail as the Belgian tried to put as much space between himself and Rossi as possible. However, an error caused Vandoorne to come under pressure himself, and he was attacked by Gasly before a safety car in the second to last lap neutralised the race once again until the checkered flag. Haryanto had managed to overtake Stanaway for the race lead in the same moment as the safety car had come out, and Stanaway retook the position just afterwards.
The track was clear again with just a few corners to go and no more moves were made: Richie Stanaway claimed his second win of the season ahead of Rio Haryanto and Raffaele Marciello. Fourth place was enough for Stoffel Vandoorne to crown himself GP2 champion wth 277.5 points and two rounds left to run. Pierre Gasly finished the race in fifth place; however, the Frenchman is under investigation for overtaking under the safety car. Alexander Rossi came home in sixth place ahead of Norman Nato and Mitch Evans.
