The Frenchman passed Alvaro Parente with five laps remaining to claim victory. After that, and a third safety car period, Grosjean streaked away to a 4.1sec win. Grosjean's victory moves him back into third place in the points table.
"The conditions were very tricky at the start, but the car was very good in the dry," said Grosjean. "It was a good fight with Parente, and then we had another safety car, so I had to do it all again."
The race was led in its early stages by pole-sitter Bruno Senna, but he was given a drive-through penalty after he was released from his mandatory pitstop in an 'unsafe manner' according to the stewards. His iSport car narrowly missed Alberto Valerio's Durango machine, which was coming in for his stop.
Senna would finish 12th, after his penalty dropped him to last place, but he was fortunate that his championship opponent, series leader Giorgio Pantano, also suffered a disastrous race.
Pantano had looked set to inherit Senna's win, but his engine reverted to safe mode during a safety car period when its water temperature got too cold. He dropped to 10th, but had recovered to eighth, and the coveted reverse grid pole position, when he spun at La Source with just four laps to go.
He continued in 10th place, but would crash out at La Source on the final lap when he tried to pass Roldan Rodriguez but hit Lucas di Grassi instead. He has been summoned to the stewards room and could face a further grid penalty for tomorrow's race.
Piquet Sports duo Andi Zuber and Pastor Maldonado finished third and fourth, but swapped the position on numerous occasions in the closing stages. Vitaly Petrov finished fifth, ahead of Sebastien Buemi, Andy Soucek and Mike Conway.
Davide Valsecchi suffered no major injuries in his shunt that caused the second safety car on lap 10 when he went straight on at Stavelot and crashed into the tyre wall at high speed. He has been flown to hospital, but has no broken bones.
The race started under the safety car, after a rain shower soaked the track just before the start, meaning everyone started on wets. They all switched to slicks during the mandatory stops.
Pos Driver Tea Time 1. Grosjean ART 1h02:33.710 2. Parente Super Nova + 4.139 3. Zuber Piquet Sports + 5.744 4. Maldonado Piquet Sports + 6.308 5. Petrov Campos + 6.783 6. Buemi Arden + 8.711 7. Soucek Super Nova + 8.939 8. Conway Trident + 9.549 9. D'Ambrosio DAMS + 10.846 10. Kobayashi DAMS + 12.790 11. Chandhok iSport + 13.048 12. Senna iSport + 13.383 13. Nunes DPR + 14.176 14. Valles BCN Comp. + 14.903 15. Herck DPR + 16.537 16. Tung Trident + 17.315 17. Asmer FMS + 17.935 18. Villa Racing Eng. + 18.204 19. Yamamoto ART + 19.705 20. Filippi Arden + 43.184 21. Pantano Racing Eng. + 1:16.651 Retirements: Driver Team Laps Di Grassi Campos 25 Rodriguez FMS 25 Valerio Durango 21 Valsecchi Durango 9 Iaconelli BCN Comp. 3 Fastest lap: Grosjean, 1:59.529 on lap 26
No comments:
Post a Comment