Antonio Giovinazzi put his foot down and did a perfect job to put himself onto the top step of the podium in today’s thrilling GP2 feature race and claim the 2016 GP2 Team’s championship for Prema Racing. ART GP’s Sergey Sirotkin had to settle for second place after a race-long battle with the Italian. Norman Nato (Racing Engineering) completed the podium, while Pierre Gasly finished outside the points and lost the championship lead to his team mate Giovinazzi.
The race on Malaysian soil began in a chaotic manner. During the warm-up before the race, Raffaele Marciello spun his Russian Time car through the gravel, but was able to continue to the formation lap. His team mate Artem Markelov however was less lucky: His race ended before it had begun when his car failed during the formation lap, and an additional formation lap had to be carried out after the marshals had not been able to remove the car during the second formation lap.
When the track had was eventually been cleared, the race started with breath-taking action: Polesitter Pierre Gasly made a very slow getaway, which would ruin his race and allowed Raffaele Marciello to dash up to the race lead from third place on the starting grid. Behind him, Giovinazzi held his second place, but was attacked right away by Sirotkin after making a slow-ish start from the front row. The squabbling pair wrestled their way past Marciello in the opening stage of the race while continuing their own battle, and behind the leading trio Racing Engineering team mates Nato and Jordan King battled for fourth place in the opening lap of the race. With Gasly dropping back rapidly, Alex Lynn (DAMS) caught up to the fighting pair too and soon overtook King for fifth place.
After the intense opening stage the field stretched out a bit, and Oliver Rowland (MP Motorsport), Gasly, and Nicholas Latifi (DAMS) were the first ones to switch from the medium to the hard tyres as soon as the pit window had opened on lap six. One lap later it was Nato who entered the pits, interrupting Lynn’s attacks, and Sirotkin, Lynn, as well as King followed suit in lap 8. Marciello made his pit stop in lap 9, however, a problem during his stop meant that he lost positions and rejoined the race behind Lynn.
Sirotkin immediately put pressure on Giovinazzi , setting the fastest lap, and the Italian decided to stop in lap 11. However, he lost valuable time by hitting the pit lane speed limiter too early so that he lost just enough time to emerge right behind Sirotkin who held the advantage on warmer tyres. The phase of tyre conserving began shortly afterwards, and the positions in the top ten remained unchanged.
At this point Gasly was struggling at the bottom of the top ten and came under attack from Mitch Evans (Campos Racing). Supported by DRS Evans managed to dash past the Frenchman with eight laps left to run, and Gustav Malja (Rapax) who had been lurking behind made his move on lap later, putting Gasly out of the points-scoring position.
The battles inside the top ten flared up again with five laps left to run. Lynn and Rowland fought teeth and claw over fourth place, trading places back and forth in a thrilling battle that lasted two laps and allowed Marciello and King to catch up and throw themselves into the mix as well. Lynn kept the advantage and defended his fourth place, while the other three cars ran side by side in a stunning fight. It was Marciello who emerged victorious and took fifth place, while Rowland began to struggle and dropped back.
With three laps until the checkered flag, Giovinazzi launched his attack on Sirotkin to take the race lead. With the help of DRS, the Italian pulled up alongside his rival on the main straight. Sirotkin, not one to give up without a fight, closed the door and the duo almost made contact through Turn 1. However, Sirotkin was not able to defend himself for long since he was on older tyres, and Giovinazzi eventually wrestled his way past the ART driver to claim the race win and the championship crown for his team. Nato crossed the finish line in third ahead of Lynn after a relatively uneventful race, while his team mate King robbed fifth place from Marciello in the final lap. Ghiotto finished in sixth place as the first of the drivers who had started the race on the harder compound. Evans claimed the reverse grid pole position ahead of Malja and Sergio Canamasas, while Gasly had to settle for eleventh place just outside the points. With no points for Gasly and the maximum points for Giovinazzi, the Italian has now overtaken his team mate in the championship standings and sit sat the top of the table with an advantage of 11 points.
