07/07/2016
NEWS STORY
The busy month of July opened last week in Spielberg: on the twisty Austrian track, the GP2 drivers delivered great battles in both races. While Antonio Giovinazzi was quickest in free practice, it was Sergey Sirotkin who grabbed pole position. The action-packed Feature Race saw Mitch
Evans lead Pertamina Campos Racing 1-2 in the final stages for a surprise win ahead of Raffaele Marciello in P3.
More drama followed on Sunday, with a star behind the safety car on a very wet track. Jordan King mastered the tricky conditions from reverse pole to claim a maiden GP2 win ahead of countrymen Oliver Rowland and Alex Lynn.
Needless to say that the three Brits will be looking for a repeat this weekend at Silverstone in front of their home crowd. But they will not be the only ones who will fight for glory, starting with the new Series leader Marciello. The Italian's consistency since the start of the 2016 campaign has been impressive: he's finished all races in the points bar Baku Sprint Race. He's been chasing after a first win this year and
will surely try again this week in order to extend his lead over his closest rivals. With only 21 points covering the top ten drivers in the standings, the battle of the eleventh GP2 Series title is one of the most intense we've ever seen.
The fifth round of the 2016 season takes place this week at Silverstone, one of the most demanding track of this year's calendar. The British track is one of the circuits that take the most lateral energy out of the tyres. The asphalt offers high levels of grip, which works the surface of
the tyre even harder. This is why Pirelli have nominated Hard and Soft compounds for this event.
Mario Isola, Pirelli Racing Manager: "The high demands of the Silverstone circuit have led us to nominate the hard and soft compounds for GP2. The high degradation means this will need to be managed carefully in the race though, and precision will be important to a good qualifying time. The strategic opportunities in the race should be high however, and it's a circuit where overtaking is certainly possible in GP2. Especially, the different levels of performance of the two compounds chosen should provide the opportunity for varying strategies."
Notes
Nobuharu Matsushita returns to the competition at the wheel of car No 1.
RUSSIAN TIME is the only team to have scored points in every single race so far.
Series leader Raffaele Marciello leads in the teams' standings with 66 points.
Mitch Evans has jumped from tenth to second in the drivers' standings after he scored a total of 28 points last week in Spielberg.
Racing Engineering have moved up from third to second in teams' standings with 100 points, 20 points behind RUSSIAN TIME and 1 point ahead of PREMA Racing.