26/02/2010
NEWS STORY
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Davide Valsecchi charged to victory in today's Feature Race in Bahrain. With this third win, the Italian snatched the title with three races to spare. Following Romain Grosjean in 2008 and Kamui Kobayashi in 2009, the iSport racer becomes the third GP2 Asia Series Champion.
As soon as the lights went out at Sakhir, Pole-sitter Jules Bianchi fell out of contention for victory following a very poor start. Javier Villa and Luca Filippi burst from second row to the first corner where the Meritus man gained the advantage over the Spaniard. Though quicker than Filippi, Villa could not find a way passed the Italian and chose to take an early pitstop on Lap 8 - a winning strategy that put him ahead of Filippi and Valsecchi once all the pit-stops were done.
In the late stages of the race, Valsecchi's pace improved. Then running in third place, he rapidly closed the gap to Filippi. After several attempts to pass his countryman, leading to one small mistake which saw him go wide at Turn 10, Valsecchi eventually overtook Filippi into Turn 1 on lap 28. It took him only one more lap to catch Villa. The Spaniard surrendered and handed him the lead one lap later also in the first corner. Valsecchi then pulled away easily and secured victory four laps later.
Struggling with his tyres, Villa could not resist Filippi's assaults for too long and had to fend off Ricci's attacks until the finish line. Behind them, Charles Pic finished fifth - also benefiting from an early pitstop strategy - ahead of Alvaro Parente and Sergio Perez. Adrian Zaugg took eighth place for Trident Racing from eighteenth on the grid. The GP2 returnee will start from pole position on tomorrow's grid.
With his nearest rival and teammate Oliver Turvey delayed in the pits following a problem on his left rear wheel and out of the points today, Valsecchi scored enough with this additional win to secure the title three races before the end of the season. The teams' title is still to be decided, though with 61 points to 20, iSport International seems impossibly close to another crown.