Sergio Perez and Jerome d’Ambrosio take the Win's in the GP2

Sergio Perez & Jerome d’Ambrosio take the Win’s in the GP2

…and Oliver Turvey had a modest weekend

Formula 1 was surrounded in controversy this weekend with safety cars and rules issues, but the GP2 drivers were not behaving much better!

Qualifying was quite a greasy affair after a rain shower in the morning, and although this was continually drying right up until the end of the sessions it still caught out Davide Valsecchi who seemed to have an accident in slow motion and nudge into Pastor Maldonado car at the end, earning him a 5 place deduction for the feature race, meaning he will start 12th.

Feature Race

Sergio Perez, the young Mexican driver, dealt with lots of pressure from behind to take the lead from the first lap and maintain his position right to the finish, however it was far from straightforward. The first lap was madness as there was a stalled car on the grid causing the Brit Max Chilton to go crashing over Davide Valsecchi’s obstructed car at the back of the grid.

Aside from all the mayhem Perez put in many fastest laps across the 42 laps to bring the car home in first place and take the lead in the championship by 1 point from his on track rivals Maldonado and Clos.

Pos	Driver	Team
1	S. Perez	Barwa Addax
2	P. Maldonado	Rapax
3	D. Clos	Racing Eng.
4	J. Bianchi	ART Grand Prix
5	A. Valerio	Scuderia Coloni

After the race the stewards handed Brit Sam Bird a 25second penalty for cutting chicanes pushing him from 6th back to 15th and demoting him to 18th place on the grid for the sprint race. Gutted!

Sprint Race

Note to self, jumping the start is not a good idea! apparently this was not obvious to a bunch of the GP2 drivers who all got penalised in the race for this, most notably was championship contender Maldonado. Jerome d’Ambrosio had no such problems. The young Belgian went on from pole to win his first Monaco GP2 race with ease. The race was pretty boring until the first round of stops (including the penalties) as the GP2 cars found it hard to overtake, much like their Formula 1 brethren.

The feature race winner Sergio Perez crept into 6th place securing a point and extending his lead in the championship.

Pos	Driver	Team
1	J. D’Ambrosio	Dams
2	G. Van Der Garde	Barwa Addax
3	J. Bianchi	ART Grand Prix
4	J. Cecotto	Trident Racing
5	L. Razia	Rapax

Oliver Turvey, our great british hope and Karting legend struggled all weekend and put in a 16th and 15th place finish in the two races. Hey Monaco just wasn’t for him! Roll on Turkey!