Category: GP2 / F3000

GP2 and F3000

2010 Race Calendar

During the 2009 season I thought it would be a great idea to create a race schedule in Google Calendar featuring different racing series. I was busy with accounts studies at the time and I never got around to taking it further. Early last month I decided it was worth exploring so I set up a trial with F1 and IndyCar dates. I’d add more later if I decided it looked okay. Again I let it drop when other things got in the way.

Christine from Sidepodcast recently created a calendar highlighting F1 events and the SPC / F1 Minute podcast schedules and she did a great job, enough to inspire me to get on and finish my idea.

Here it is!

(note – WordPress doesn’t allow the iFrame code that makes the embed work so I have had to leave it out for now)

My schedule includes F1, F2, GP2, IndyCar, Le Mans 24hr, ALMS, LMS, MotoGP, WRC, IRC and WTCC. I’ve also put in Dakar, Goodwood and a couple of other things. I’ll add NASCAR Sprint Cup and DTM soon – there are categories already so if you add them the events will hopefully appear in your calendar automatically.

Christine’s calendar is F1-specific and it includes Free Practice, pre-season testing and car launches. My calendar includes none of these things, only qualifying and race. I highly recommend adding Christine’s F1 calendar if you would like this extra information.

Click the “+GoogleCalendar” button to add to your own Google Calendar account. I have split events by race series so you can just pick the ones you want. I think there is a way to get them into iCal and other systems, though I don’t know how.

The calendar is set to UK time because that’s where I am and that’s most useful to me. I’m not sure but I believe when you import it, it will adjust it to your own default timezone. Have a play with it and see.

Race start times are estimates apart from F1 and Le Mans. This information is surprisingly hard to find. E.g. IndyCar.com only lists TV start times, not race starts. Many sites only give the dates and I’ve had to improvise. Then there’s the issue of timezones which I may have got wrong. I plan to make each forthcoming weekend as accurate as I can, beyond that just use this as a guide.

I’ve included qualifying for F1, Le Mans 24Hrs and IndyCar (times estimated). I don’t intend to include any more qualifying.

I hope you find this useful and please let me know if there is anything you would like to add. If the demand is there and I think it warrants adding, I’ll do so. I’m already considering Indy Lights.

As you can see I’ve also added a list version to the sidebar. When I create the new site I will have a version similar to the one above on its own page.

EDIT – WordPress does not allow embeds so I have linked them on the sidebar. This means you can pick and choose the series you are interested in! I’ve also since created calendars for Indy Lights and GrandAm.

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Race Review: GP2 Asia Sepang ’09

GP2 Asia Series 2008/09
Sepang, Malaysia
Held: 4&5 April 09
Commentary: Martin Haven & Gareth Rees

Continuing my Race Review catch up series, this was the primary support event to the Malaysian GP and is the penultimate round of the series.

Points coming in:

Kobayashi 39
Valsecchi 29
Hülkenberg 27
Perez 25
D’Ambrosio 23

Feature Race – 33 laps
(the Sprint Race is noted below)

Qualifying:
1. D’Ambrosio (DAMS)
2. Nunes (Piquet GP)
3. Jakes (Super Nova)
4. Kobayashi (DAMS)
5. Villa (Super Nova)
6. Petrov (Campos)

The top 22 are covered by under 1 second, which the guys say is a surprise, and as Gareth says “this isn’t Mallory Park this is a proper Grand Prix circuit”.

Drama as the coverage begins as D’Ambrosio has NOT taken his pole position! His car broke down on the warm-up lap and he had to pit, he won’t take the start, could rejoin later but will be many laps down.

The other omission is Nico Hülkenberg who is not racing this weekend, Pastor Maldonado has reclaimed the seat.

START

Several slow starts and the cars fan out wide, Villa stalls it from 5th on the grid. Lots of bumping and contact through that twiddly bit at the start of the lap.

Lots of side-by-side action throughout the first lap, but Mortara is out on lap one.
Nunes leads Petrov, Kobayashi and Maldonado.

32 to go – Parente passes..someone. Hard to tell. These liveries aren’t easy to ID.

30 – Perez started 18th but is already up to 10th.

27 – Nunes leads, in 2nd and 3rd Petrov and Kobayashi are all over each other!

26 – Early pit stop for Kobayashi. He was sort of caught behind Petrov.
Ooh, Petrov runs VERY wide and allows Jakes into 2nd place.

25 – Maldonado pushing hard runs wide, scoots across the grasscrete or whatever it is, rejoins with dirty tyres and some positions down. Gareth: “Typical Pastor”. The guys say he’s a charming chap but he’s a rough diamond.

Nice move by Yelmer Buurman on Vitaly Petrov, who is really struggling to get his car stopped yet still made Buurman work for it.

23 – Petrov loses another place as someone drafts him down the back straight, so he dives into the pits for new rear tyres.
Slow car on track: Razia crawling in 1st or maybe even coasting.

22 – Maldonado pits.. he’s got damage on the nose. He’s out in 15th with more yet to stop.

Shots of F1 personnel on the pit stand watching the race, including Nelson Piquet Jr and Felipe Massa. Remember this race happened shortly after F1 qualifying. Parente takes Gonzalez, who then pits..

20 – Nunes pits from the lead, as does Valsecchi who has a very slow stop with a sticking right rear.

19 – Perez has stopped in the pit entry, nearly blocking it. Dark clouds are approaching!
Perez has been pushed to his pit – replay and it looks like his radiator has been holed.

17 – Jakes is pushing Kobayashi for what will end up as 2nd after the pitstops.

15 – Al-Fardan finally makes his stop, the last to do so.

8 – Jakes is still close behind Kobayashi but can’t seem to do anything about it.

7 – Maldonado smokes his tyres in an attempt to pass Petrov, can’t make it by at the hairpin, tries it again at turn one and still can’t do it! Couple of flat-spots on those tyres now, Valsecchi watching on.

4 – Discussion on the merits of KERS and how GP2 could have it if F1 develops it to be cheap enough. Hmm, hindsight.. 🙂

3 – Maldonado makes an error and allows Parente to draw alongside, both have patience and Parente takes the position. Comment from Gareth that the Maldonado of old would’ve taken Parente out there and then.

2 – Maldonado and Valsecchi are close together as they lap a backmarker, both are just a little behind Petrov.

Diego Nunes wins!

Result:
1 Nunes (PiquetGP) 33 laps
2 Kobayashi (DAMS) +8.36s
3 Jakes (Super Nova) +9.15s
4 Rodriguez (PiquetGP) +13.87s
5 Buurman (Ocean) +16.81s
6 Petrov (Campos) +41.46s

Summary:
Pretty flat end to the race. Lots of drivers in little close groups but not seemingly able to do anything to make a pass. Good job from Nunes and Jakes, complete change of fortunes over previous form, well done. Amazingly, Al-Fardan came 9th after looking utterly hopeless back in Qatar.

Sprint Race – 22 laps

It is wet for Sunday’s race, which was held a couple of hours before the F1 race. As ever the grid is the result of the Feature with the top 8 reversed.

1 Valsecchi
2 Maldonado
3 Petrov
4 Buurman
5 Rodriguez
6 Jakes

As it turns out this race has been delayed by 30 minutes by the wet conditions and we will have a Safety Car start (and no formation lap).

START

Yamamoto has stalled at the start and so has one of the FMS cars, could be Chen. Both cars are pushed into the pitlane. Yamamoto gets fired but stops at the end of pitlane, while they are taking the engine cover off Chen’s car. I’m not sure why Yamamoto stopped, he has a green light which now turns red as the field comes by behind the SC to complete lap 1.

18 to go – Safety Car is in, green flag!
Contact on the last corner between Maldonado and Valsecchi.

A couple of spinners at turn two including James Jakes – that’s a shame after his race 1 run.

No rain but the track is very wet, the cars are kicking up spray so it is hard to see who is close behind someone.

17 – Maldonado tries several times and makes it by Valsecchi, Petrov’s coming with him. Meanwhile Buurman runs wide and loses a couple of places. I was doing the same at that corner on the Wii last night..

16 – Kobayashi brakes far too late and runs into the wide runoff at turn one, loses a position.

15 – Maldonado leads, followed by Petrov, Valsecchi, Nunes, Al Fardan, Buurman, Parente and Gonzalez. Kobayashi is 11th, D’Ambrosio 17th.

12 – The DPR cars are off course and out of the race.

Nice dive from Petrov at the final corner to pass Maldonado for the lead! Interesting to see Petrov is quite a bit faster today, relative the rest of the field.

11 – Petrov, Maldonado, Valsecchi, Nunes, Al Fardan, Gonzalez, Kobayashi, Buurman. Points only go to the top 6 in the Sprint though.

Petrov just set the fastest lap of the race. Apparently Jakes got the point for FL yesterday (Villa was faster, Jakes was fastest of the top ten finishers, a rule to prevent pitting for tyres and going for a time).

Replay of D’Ambrosio running off track into an area where several marshalls and a tractor were working on two cars already – dangerous stuff, he should’ve backed off under yellow and he didn’t. Commentary guys are saying he should get a penalty, I agree.

9 – Rodriguez off course, too much speed and into the gravel. I think he recovers eventually.
Pics of Razia walking back to the pits.

The track is drying now and there’s not much spray. Due to the Safety Car start and the wet conditions this is now a timed race and there are 11 minutes to go.

D’Ambrosio does indeed get a black flag, hooray for the stewards! Replay again, the car in front checks up and Jerome just drives by and off course. He pits and shuts down the engine – looks like a straight black flag and not a time penalty!

8mins – Replay of Al Fardan running wide at turn one, same way Rodriguez did.

Perez vs Gonzalez – Perez makes the pass through turns 1 and 2 but loses out at the switchback, he makes it stick a few corners later.

5mins – Nunes sets Fastest Lap. The guys are talking about setups, some of those who have gone for dry or intermediate setups should be getting faster than the guys with wet setups now.

2m30s – Parente is now fastest. Kobayashi is pressuring Al Fardan for 4th, he’s closed up but doesn’t seem to be able to make the move.

The clock hits zero, last lap.

Vitaly Petrov wins!

Kobayashi and Perez cross the line side-by-side!! Who got it? How did Perez get up to Kobayashi?
Replays: Perez gets the position by half a nose! Fantastic, and it was the final points place as well..

Result:
1 Petrov (Campos) 22 laps
2 Maldonado (ART) +2.91s
3 Valsecchi (Durango) +4.34s
4 Nunes (Piquet GP) +6.36s
5 Al Fardan (iSport) +21.54s
6 Perez (Campos) +24.49s

Summary:
A drying race track saw some desparate moves, some worked and some didn’t and it was fun to watch both those and the struggles to control the cars on the slippery surface.

POINTS:
1 Kobayashi 47
2 Valsecchi 34
3 Petrov 28
4 Hulkenberg 27
5 Rodriguez 27
6 Perez 26

Next up is final round of this GP2 Asia season supporting the Bahrain GP, and with 22 points available for two wins and two fastest laps it isn’t over yet.

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!

Catch-Up: GP2 Asia – 5&6 – Bahrain

GP2 Asia Series
Rnd 5, Bahrain Feature
Held 23 Jan / Watched 31 Aug

This is GP2 Asia’s first of two visits for the 2008/’09 winter series, the second visit will come as the support to the F1 race in April. As always, first up we have the feature race which today is for 34 laps. These are my ‘short notes’ – I want to cover lots more racing and I’m still working out the best way to do it, either short-form versions of the notes posts or more general impressions like the recent A1GP post.

I’ve got the Eurosport commentary team of Martin Haven and Gareth Rees. Haven is the 2nd tier / junior series extraordinaire, he seems to do commentary on literally *everything* outside of F1 in Europe. Rees is an experienced driver at this level having competed in F3000 for a while before running out of money.

Gridded. Long hold on the start..
Hulkenberg leads into turn one. Kobayashi 2nd. At least 3 stallers.

Stallers are clear as leaders complete lap one, either got fired on the grid or were pulled into pitlane for refiring..

Lots of action back in the pack. GP2 cars, particularly in the Asia Series, are not easily identifiable and less so the drivers. No standout colour schemes. The cameras being so far from the race track don’t help, they aren’t zooming in enough.

Top 5 after 2 laps: Hulkenberg, Kobayashi, Mortara, d’Ambrosio, Rodriguez

Haven on Hulkenberg: “Willi Weber will try and talk him into being the next Schumacher, whether that’s Michael or Ralf remains to be seen.” Ha!

Dive-bomb into turn 1! Cars left, right, everywhere as they try and lap a backmarker who was delayed when he stalled at the start. Backmarker should have eased off and let the leaders through, he just got in the way.. d’Ambrosio ahead of Mortara in the melee.

After 8 laps, Hulkenberg and Kobayashi have checked out on the rest of the field. Kamui is pushing hard and is only 0.37sec behind Nico, trying to pressure the F3 Euroseries champ into a mistake. Commentary guys earlier made the point that Nico won’t be used to the race lengths and the higher g-forces of these cars compared to F3, and that’ll come into play in the second stint.

We’re not really seeing what’s going on with the rest of the field, which is a shame. This earlier generation car is more entertaining than the current European series car, we’re bound to be missing something good back there.

Eventually we see it.. just a long line of cars. I’m disappointed.

Kobayashi passes Hulkenberg into turn 1! Very late on the brakes, nice move.

Pitstops, 14 laps done 20 to go.
Wheels bang, Perez and Villa touch!
Top six are running longer on their stops.

Problem for Hulkenberg’s tyre changer, long stop on the right rear. Cost him a position to Mortara.

Hulkenberg is faster than Mortara, he’s trying it on Mortara with Rodriguez & co closing in.

Valsecchi passes van der Garde, caught him completely unawares, good move.
Ricci got tagged into a spin.. put himself on the apex and someone clouted him. Not sure of his position in the order..

Kobayashi leads d’Ambrosio by about 8sec, with Mortara and Hulkenberg 6sec further back.

Pretty poor driving standards in this field, particularly Razia weaving all around, looking like ramming his opponents off the track.. I know the Asia Series attracts new drivers rather than series returnees but this is silly.

Valsecchi has passed Rodriguez, working his way up the field from 10th, doing a good job. Rodriguez could have a problem because van der Garde is catching fast as well, or is he just slow.. commentary is saying he was an early stopper, could he have worn his tyres out?

Kobayashi wins!! – despite there being no flag until the 2nd place man crosses the line… oops.

Points go to D’Ambrosio, Mortara, Hulkenberg, Valsecchi, Rodriguez, van der Garde, and the reverse grid pole to Perez.

Pretty boring race after the stops, seems to be a theme for these Asia Series races, action early on then gets dull quickly. The two DAMS cars hammered the field here, good job from them. Kobayashi is still at racing speed on what is meant to be the cooldown lap… he didn’t see a flag so he’s carrying on! Eventually he gets the message and heads to parc ferme.

Truly awful standards on the last lap when someone tried to run Yamamoto off the track, could have been Razia again! Let’s hope things are better for the Sprint, and also for the F1 visit later in the year. Keep scrolling for the next one..

****
GP2 Asia Series
R6, Bahrain Sprint
Held Jan 24 / Watched Aug 31

23 lap sprint race, no stops, reverse top 8 on the grid, points only to 6th in this race.

Good start from Perez, has a healthy lead through turn 1. Cars 3-wide after turn 1! Another stalled car on the grid.
Van der Garde pitted at the end of the formation lap but seems to be running now.
Nunes comes out of the pits after missing the start, he may have been the staller left behind this time.

Replay of a great start from Villa, up from row 5 to brake ultra-late into turn one and is now 4th. Courageous! Of course had he got it wrong he’d looks stupid..

D’Ambrosio passes his teammate Kobayashi.
Ooh, lots of action all down the field!
Petrov and Yamamoto going at it, Petrov coming off better.

Wow, 4-wide, nearly 5-wide for a short while! I think this is the same group, Yamamoto, Petrov, Gonzalez, Bonanomi and a couple of others – people keep catching this group which is being held up by Gonzalez.

Perez leads, Valsecchi, Hulkenberg, Valles are the top 4.

Al-Fardan proves he’s completely out of his depth as he wanders all over the road, then fails to brake for the corner, hits Razia and loses his front wing – has to pit for a repair. Razia wasn’t at fault at all, perhaps unusually.

D’Ambrosio has passed Villa for 4th – switchback move, good stuff!

Valsecchi is catching Perez who may be struggling for grip. d’Ambrosio passes Hulkenberg with less than a lap to go!

Perez wins by 0.7 seconds!

Perez, Valsecchi, D’Ambrosio, Hulkenberg, Villa, Kobayashi (who seemed a little off-pace).
D’Ambrosio started 7th, good job to get a podium. Bamber finishes 7th, Mortara 8th but no points for those in the sprint race.

Good entertaining stuff this one.

Points:
1. Kobayashi 34
2. Valsecchi 24
3. Rodriguez 22
4. D’Ambrosio 17
5. Villa 12
6. Perez 10
7. Hulkenberg 10
8. Bamber 8

Next up is Losail, Qatar – which is GP2’s first night race – and then a visit to Malaysia to hook up with F1 before the finale which is back here in Bahrain.