Pierre Gasly has won his first series race after two full seasons of GP2. From starting second on the grid, he used his tyre strategy to jump Norman Nato in the pits to finish with an impressive 9.422-second advantage. Antonio Giovinazzi made it a PREMA one-two for the second time of the season, with homeboy Oliver Rowland finishing third.
Nato made an impressive start off the line, dashing towards Abbey with no threat from behind. Gasly’s start was not as fast as he would have wanted it to be and he was hampered, managing to keep hold off second but losing a lot of time to the Racing Engineering car. The start was also not so good for Mitch Evans who managed to lose a few places from the start. He stayed out of trouble as the traffic behind surrounded him, but dropped from sixth.
The first corner incident occurred between Gustav Malja and Sean Gelael as the Campos driver hit the rear right tyre of the Rapax car, giving Malja a rear right puncture and broke his front wing. Alex Lynn had to take evasive action in his DAMS behind as the collision occurred in front of him. Neither driver was penalised for the incident but both were forced to pit and were handed five-second penalties for speeding in the pit lane. Gelael gained another five-second penalty for speeding in the pits as he pitted to change his tyres a lap later.
After the soft-compound starters completed their pit stops the real battle happened in the middle of the top ten. Jordan King made a beautiful pass through the inside of Vale to take third position in the opening stages of the race. Mitch Evans repeated the same move to get up into fifth place. Both drivers showing impressive talent to make the risky move stick through the tight corner of Vale.
Raffaele Marciello and Evans were peeling through the cars ahead until they sat P4/P5 respectively. Evans became the splitter of the Russian Time drivers as Artem Markelov, on the charge, got up to P6. Many laps followed of Markelov looking for a way pass the Campos ahead but Evans was defending strongly, leaving no chance for his ex-teammate to get a position over him. But a stellar move that started at the beginning of Hanger Straight saw the Russian taking both Evans and his teammate through Stowe corner. He got the run on Evans, who had been trying to make the pass on Marciello, going side by side with the Campos down the straight. Taking the inside of Stowe, Markelov managed to get passed Evans and Marciello in the same corner, ecstatically celebrating on the radio.
Pierre Gasly was chasing down his first GP2 win. After having started on the soft tyre to try and get the boost off the start, he had to pit early, jumping into the pits on lap six to change for the hard compound of tyre. He was making impressive progression through the field of early stoppers and had closed the gap to the leader so that once Nato had pitted he should take the lead from his fellow Frenchman. This tactic worked and as the race drew to an end Gasly’s lead was seven second ahead of Oliver Rowland who had managed to get up to second.
Evans managed to jump King in the pits as the Racing Engineering crew had a slow pit stop with the rear right going on slowly. This meant the Kiwi driver came out on track right behind polesitter Nato and, on the softer/faster compound, was on the charge. It took a couple of laps but Evans demoted Nato for sixth before turning his eyes onto returning Nobuharu Matsushita for fifth. In a matter of laps, Evans had got himself up from sixth to fourth, where he ended the race.
Luca Ghiotto finished fifth ahead of Matsushita in sixth. Nato could not make his soft compound tyres work and ended seventh, ahead of Racing Engineering’s King. Sadly, after his impressive moves up the grid, Markelov had a very slow pit stop that dropped him right down the field. He finished tenth, taking the final point behind his teammate Marciello. There were no retirees from the race as all 22 drivers made it to the chequered flag.
