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Race Review: GP2 Asia Qatar ’09

GP2 Asia Series (08/09)
Losail, Doha, Qatar
7&8 of 12
Held: 14-15 February 2009
Watched: 3 October 2009
Coverage: Eurosport / Martin Haven & Gareth Rees

This is the first ever GP2 night race but Qatar has hosted night events for MotoGP and World Superbikes before so this should be no problem for them.

Feature Race (34 laps)

Grid:

1. Hülkenberg (ART) 2. Perez (Campos)
3. Petrov (Campos) 4. Kobayashi (DAMS)
5. Rodriguez (Piquet) 6. Yamamoto (ART)
7. Villa (Super Nova) 8. Valsecchi (Durango)
9. Mortara (Arden) 10. D’Ambrosio (DAMS)
11. Jakes (Super Nova) 12. Bonanomi (Meritus)
13. Parente (Meritus) 14. Nunes (Piquet)
15. Crestani (Ocean) 16. van der Garde (iSport)
17. Herck (DPR) 18. Ricci (DPR)
19. Razia (Arden) 20. Rigon (Trident)
21. Al Fardan (iSport) 22. Gonzalez (FMS)
23. Buurman (Ocean) 24. Porvenzano (Trident)
25. M.Dalle Stelle (Durango) 26. Nai Chia Chen (FMS)

[all Dallara-Renault-Bridgestone]

Kevin Chen was SEVEN seconds per lap slower than Hulkenberg in qualifying. Stunningly bad.

Formation Lap

Medium compound tyre this weekend. Like F1 there is a range of tyres, unlike F1 they use the same one for the whole weekend at the choice of Bridgestone.

Parente is new in at Ocean so he’ll take this race to acclimatise, he hasn’t raced since October.

Grid.. GO!

BIG CRASH on the start. Commentary says Yamamoto had stalled and he was hit. Huge impact as the back of the grid gets up to speed.

Safety Car

Yamamoto is ok. 3 or 4 others involved and those guys seem okay too. Buurman is one of them. Gonzalez another.

Safety Car is stopped at the beginning of the main straight to wait for the leaders, who reach it… and it doesn’t move. Front straight blocked with debris.

Replay: Buurman jinked right to avoid a slower car and rams Yamamoto, there’s no way he could have seen that car, he was unsighted due to the wing of the other car he was avoiding.

The field is now being led through the pit lane.

Very slow clear up. They don’t have a road sweeper, and they only have one man with a brush! They also only seem to have one Caterpillar lifter to move the cars..

32 to go – Perez leads. Al Fardan has stalled on pit entry. Eventually he gets in to the pits and is refired.
31 – Chen does the same. Gareth says it’ll be no loss if he’s not restarted.. Ah, they’ve found some more brooms.
29 – Main straight is now clear and the SC lights are off. Order: Perez, Hulkenberg, Petrov, Kobayashi, Valsecchi, Villa.
28 – RESTART
27 – D’Ambrosio pits from 8th or so. Rigon is in from a long way down. Tyre temps will be very low after this 20 minute yellow period, in which the SC was driving very slowly even for a Safety Car.

25 – Parente passes Mortara at turn one.
Kobayashi in trouble, Valsecchi and Villa pass him.
Petrov pits. Villa takes Valsecchi with the momentum from the other move. Good stuff.
24 – Rodriquez spins it at turn one, stuck in the gravel, he’s out.
21 – Villa passes Hülkenberg for 2nd, though they do need to pit. Petrov is fastest man on track.
20 – Perez pits from the lead. Kobayashi is dropping back again.
19 – Villa leads for one lap and then pits.

Petrov leads Perez after their stops, potential lead change between team-mates when it shakes out after Petrov put in solid laps – but Perez is now all over him.

16 – Perez passes Petrov, who’s shot his tyres with those fast laps. Hülkenberg has still to pit, he was pulling a gap on these two.

13 – Ahh, Villa has been given a drive-thru for pitlane speeding. He was driving well for a podium, too. Shame.
Della Stella is crawling around with a loose rear wheel. Hm.

Good racing between Valsecchi and the chasing d’Ambrosio, who makes a nice move on the main straight, the last of several clean attempts. No blocking or swerving here.

Bit of a stalemate for a while (that’s code for BORING).

6 – Provenzano spins at turn one, recovers through the gravel. I have never heard of him.
5 – Hülkenberg makes his pit stop from a huuuge lead. Slightly held up by a DPR car also pitting, from almost a lap down.
Nico H. rejoins the track still with a big lead! The entire length of the pit straight (and Losail has a long straight).
3 – Provenzano is off again, looks like a wheel hub breaking..
2 – Hülkenberg has a 16sec lead and Kobayashi’s tyres have come alive! He’s chasing Petrov for 3rd now, I didn’t notice that earlier. Tyres are an oddity here it seems.
1 – Last lap.

FLAG – Hülkenberg wins!

Top Ten Margin Pts
1 Hülkenberg 34 laps 10+1
2 Perez 13.295 sec 8
3 Petrov 14.343 sec 6
4 Kobayashi 14.746 sec 5
5 D’Ambrosio 23.419 sec 4
6 Valsecchi 33.919 sec 3
7 Mortara 35.214 sec 2
8 Razia 35.341 sec 1
9 Jakes 41.162 sec
10 Crestani 43.774 sec

Hülkenberg picks up the point for Fastest Lap. True FL-setter Parente was outside the top ten, this rule prevents backmarkers pitting for new tyres every few laps and doing qualifying runs to get the point. Keep scrolling down for Sunday’s race.

* * *
Sprint Race (23 laps)

Yelmer Buurman does not take the start after yesterday’s crash, it seems because they haven’t been able to repair the car in time rather than for medical reasons but I’m not completely sure.

Grid is the finishing positions from the Feature with the top 8 reversed.

1. Razia 2. Mortara
3. Valsecchi 4. D’Ambrosio
5. Kobayashi 6. Petrov
7. Perez 8. Hülkenberg
9. Jakes 10. Crestani

Pastor Maldonado’s seat has been taken by Nico Hulkenberg for a few races and this will be Nico’s last event of the GP2 Asia season.

Grid..GO!

Front row slow away, Campos guys [Petrov and Perez] away fast from row 3 and jump into 1st and 2nd by the first turn!
Kobayashi and d’Ambrosio dropped from 4th/5th to 7th/8th on the start.

22 to go – Perez leads Petrov, only just.
21 – Hülkenberg and Razia run wide into the dust!
19 – Jakes re-passes Crestani at turn one (didn’t realise he’d gone back..).
18 – Now he takes someone else.. can’t identify.

Parente is off-track, through the gravel, rejoins bringing lots of dust and crap on to the circuit. A few drivers have done this now, it doesn’t help the grip which is pretty bad as it is.

Perez, Petrov, Mortara, Hülkenberg, Valsecchi, Razia, D’Ambrosio, van der Garde.

16 – Top 3 well clear of the rest of the field which is still running in close proximity to each other. Bonanomi in the Qi Meritus Mahara car passes Rigon for 14th.

Meritus race in the GP2 Asia Series in place of Racing Engineering who only race in the European series, all the other teams race in both.

14 – Bonamomi racing closely with Nunes and takes the place, some close hard and fair racing!

12 – Perez and Petrov have cleared off in to the distance but Mortara has dropped into the clutches of Hülkenberg. Nico has been looking after his tyres much more effectively than his rivals who have all slowed down somewhat compared to earlier.

11 – Hülkenberg now racing Mortara, can’t quite make it work. Rear-facing onboard! We can see Valsecchi and Razia coming up behind them.

Kobayashi is dropping down the field, he’s 14th.

8 – Hulkenberg passes Mortara for 3rd just as we go to a commercial break! Now, can Valsecchi and the three guys behind him capitalise? Only a quick break, wow, Nico hit the warp drive, he’s suddenly 3sec up the road one lap after the pass!

6 – Parente gets really crossed-up in the dust and loses a bundle of positions. The Hulk is 1sec/lap faster than the two leaders, but may not have enough laps to catch up.

4 – Provencano spins into the gravel, elsewhere so does Chen. Replay: Crestani runs wide and Provencano loses control into the gravel trap! Avoidence or coincidence, hard to say.. Frankie Provencano has graduated from Formula Master.

2 – Mortara in 4th is bottling up a lot of cars behind him, big train has caught him up all the way down to 11th! And now they are all catching Chen, who did a 2 minute lap last time compared to 1m41 for the leaders…

Perez suddenly jumps forward in lap time, a clear 2sec faster than before.

Sergio Perez wins!

Top Ten Margin Pts
1 Perez 23 laps 6+1
2 Petrov 2.355 sec 5
3 Hülkenberg 11.929 sec 4
4 Mortara 19.454 sec 3
5 Valsecchi 21.735 sec 2
6 Razia 22.618 sec 1
7 D’Ambrosio 24.029 sec
8 van der Garde 24.346 sec
9 Jakes 25.253 sec
10 Villa 26.074 sec

Perez gets the point for Fastest Lap. A great result for the Barwa Campos Team, 2nd and 3rd in the Feature race and a 1-2 in the Sprint!

Points:

Kobayashi 39
Valsecchi 29
Hülkenberg 27
Perez 25
Rodriguez 22
D’Ambrosio 21
Petrov 19
Villa 12
Mortara 11
Bamber 8

The next race was at Sepang seven weeks later supporting the Malaysian Grand Prix.
Now that we’re in the off-season I will catch up with those rounds soon – I hope!

Must Comment Monday

Eagle-eyed readers visiting the site will have noticed a red logo appeared in the sidebar a couple of weeks ago: Must Comment Monday. You may have seen it elsewhere too.

The idea is this:

– Visit several blogs on a Monday and if there are any new entries that day, you must leave a comment.
– If there are several entries on a blog you only need comment on one.
– If the blog requires a password it is exempt, although if you already have a login you may as well use it!
– Do try and say something interesting or constructive rather than something just to say you commented. The ‘first comment!’ phenomenon is to be discouraged.

Of course, us bloggers have to keep up our side of the deal too and keep posting blog entries as well as commenting elsewhere. Let’s not have our blogs sleep through the off-season! This is a great way to keep comments flowing and every blogger knows comments are everything, the lifeblood of a blog.

This is another initiative from those fine folk of Sidepodcast, who seem to be good at prompting people to blog. You can read more on MCM in this post.

Thursday Thoughts: F1 Launches

This week’s Thursday Thoughts question from Sidepodcast:

Should F1 teams launch 2010 cars in a single launch event?

When I first read the question I thought I would be in favour, but after considering the pros and cons I’ve turned out to be against the idea. Let’s run through them.

In favour of a group launch:

– It cuts costs for everyone. Perhaps they would each pay a flat rate to FOTA who would hire a venue, perhaps they could even get a neutral company (say a series sponsor like LG) to sponsor the event and make it break even.

– All of the world’s F1 media would be in the same place at once. Not only would this cut their costs but it would mean not having to choose between competing events held the same day.

– It would create a huge pre-season buzz with all the new cars appearing before the world at once, or in reality probably in stages through the day. The publicity would be huge! You could even set up a dummy grid, though I’m sure you’d have to draw lots for the order.

In favour of individual launches:

– ‘Launches’ these days aren’t the frivolous affairs of the late 90s with the Spice Girls and the dry ice. The cost of plonking a tarpaulin-covered car in the pitlane in Jerez really isn’t that high when it is there for testing anyway.

– If there are launches held on the same day in different countries, the bigger players tend to have enough staff or freelancers to be able to send one or two to each.

– We already have a huge pre-season buzz, it just isn’t concentrated into a focal point, it is spread over many weeks or even months. This for me as a fan is the clincher. The anticipation builds from late January as car after car is steadily launched right up until we can visualise the full grid in early March, just days before the real thing. No other form of motorsport can or does do this.

– If they launched at the same time only the specialist motorsport press will cover every team. At the moment the general media might have a larger story for McLaren and a smaller one for Force India, but they’d pretty much all get something, at least in newspapers. If they launched all at once the editors would have the same space to cram in 13 or 14 teams and it just isn’t going to happen, they’d pick Brawn, McLaren, Ferrari and maybe one other. This should be the clincher for the teams but they seem to have missed it.

The group shot idea I had above – it would look cool to have the cars lined up together but the team sponsors would probably prefer the focus to be on their car on that day. With an individual launch you get the focus on your team and your sponsors. For this reason alone I am amazed a team like McLaren, with their focus on “corporate partners” (never “sponsors” for McLaren) is prepared to even entertain the idea let alone consider it seriously.

In other responses I have seen it said the new teams would prefer individual launches to get the focus but actually I disagree with that. I think they are pushing for a group launch. Why? Because it legitimises them to be seen alongside Ferrari and McLaren and so forth. At this stage that is worth a considerable amount more to them than a single-focus launch – but that isn’t enough of a reason to go for it.

Then you have other issues such as the invited guests. Would you have one conference room, wheeling in each set of sponsor’s bigwigs before wheeling in the car? Then getting them all to leave in a timely manner before the next group, bearing in mind you have essentially 8am to 8pm to launch 13 teams?

I think the cons outweigh the pros on this one, not just in number but in gravity. It was a good idea and let’s not fault them for coming up with radical ideas for they are needed, but the execution of it is a logistical nightmare and the media benefits – which after all is the point of holding a launch – are diminished in my view.

Weekend Preview: 21-22 November 2009

This is the final Weekend Preview of the season, thanks for reading and I hope these posts have been useful!

Windsor Arch 56th Macau Grand Prix

– Guia Circuit, Macau, PRC
– www.macau.grandprix.gov.mo/app/home/gp56/en
– Live Timing from MST (note this link is for all non-WTCC races at the circuit this week)
– with WTCC (see below), FBMW Pacific and a host of regional championships

The classic Formula 3 event attracts competitors from the Euroseries and the Japanese and British series, I am not sure if the Australians also attend? I am always surprised at how fast the F3 cars look at this course, the long straight sections mean the cars are in high gearing, low downforce trim which while fast on the open road, the drivers have to struggle with through the narrow twisty part of the track.

The Macau Grand Prix format for F3 is for a 10-lap Qualification Race on Saturday at 1.45pm Macau time, followed by the 15-lap Grand Prix on Sunday at 3.30pm their time. That’s about 4.30am here… I think.

I can’t find any live UK TV coverage!
I can’t find any recorded coverage either.

FIA World Touring Car Championship

– Marriott Race of Macau
– Guia Circuit, Macau, PRC
– www.macau.grandprix.gov.mo/app/home/gp56/en
– and www.fiawtcc.com
– Live Timing from MST (WTCC only, for F3 use the link in the Macau GP section above)
– Final round

The usual format of two equal-length races on Sunday of just 9 laps each around this long circuit, that’s good for the normal race time of about 25 minutes. It might be short but there’s action all the way at Macau!

This is Tom Coronel in the 2007 race.

UK TV: There is continuous coverage encompassing both races from 4am UK time, with only a short break between races (which is utterly crazy with the damage this place can cause). It is repeated at 11.35am on Eurosport 2.

NASCAR Sprint Cup

– Ford 400
– Homestead Miami Speedway, Homestead, Florida, USA
– www.nascar.com
– UK TV: SKY SPORTS XTRA at 8pm Sunday
– US TV: LIVE on ABC at 2.30pm ET Sunday

Jimmie Johnson holds a large points lead going into the final round of the long, long NASCAR year. He’s pretty much guaranteed unless there’s one of those famous crashes all the “fans” apparently want to see, although since they pay points just for turning up perhaps they should give him the Cup now…

NASCAR Nationwide Series

– Ford 300
– Homestead Miami Speedway, Homestead, Florida, USA
– www.nascar.com
– US TV: LIVE on ESPN2 at 4pm ET Saturday (not covered in UK)

Speaking of just turning up, Kyle Busch only needs to start this race to secure the 2nd tier title.


NASCAR Camping World Truck Series

– Ford 200
– Homestead Miami Speedway, Homestead, Florida, USA
– www.nascar.com
– US TV: LIVE on SPEED at 7.30pm ET Friday (not covered in UK)

I know nothing of this series and I’m not sure I know anyone who does..

Intercontinental Rally Challenge

– Rally of Scotland
– Perth to Stirling, Scotland
– www.ircseries.com

This is the IRC’s maiden visit to the UK. There will be updates throughout the weekend on Eurosport including live stages! Tune at 8.45am and 4pm Friday, 9am and 1.45pm Saturday, and 6am and 7.15pm Sunday.


Australian V8 Supercars

– Barbagallo, Australia
– www.v8supercar.com.au
– Penultimate round

Weekend Preview 5-6 December 2009

Just for completeness, the final round of V8s is in two weeks’ time:

Australian V8 Supercars

– Oran Park, Australia
– www.v8supercar.com.au

That’s it! After these races the 2009 season is over. The first event of 2010 is the Dakar which is in South America again in early January, then the IRC opens the ‘regular’ season with the Monte Carlo Rally on the weekend of the 23rd. The first circuit race of note is the Daytona 24 Hours at the end of January, a mere two months away.

Thanks to the following sources this season:
FORIX;
Autosport magazine;
RadioTimes.com;
LiveSportOnTV.com;