Alex Lynn scores his first GP2 in Barcelona sprint race

  • 2015 GP2 Barcelona Sprint Race, pit stop

The GP2 Barcelona sprint race was scheduled to begin 10:35 with Norman Nato on pole and feature winner Stoffel Vandoorne on eighth position. Mitch Evans sadly didn’t make it to the grid, as his car stopped before he could occupy his grid position. Nick Yelloly was starting from the pits because he earned a penalty during the first race of the weekend. Before the race even started, Nobuharu Matsushita lost his engine when Arthur Pic missed his spot on the grid.

The 25 laps long race began with Nato maintaining his lead, but Alex Lynn and Vandoorne already made great progress, jumping to second and fourth. On lap 2, there’s been a collision between Andre Negrao and Rene Binder who suffered a lot of damage to his car. After the virtual safety, the race was resumed on the second lap and racing continued in full swing. Nato was followed by Lynn and Vandoorne, with Pierre Gasly, Alexander Rossi and Rio Haryanto behind as well. Matsushita luckily returned to the track, giving his best to make up for lost engine, and Pic got a 5 second penalty for missing his place on the grid.

On lap 7, reigning GP3 champion Alex Lynn went to second and started expanding his gap over Vandoorne, who overtook Norman Nato in a clean DRS maneuver. Pierre Gasly got the upper hand on Nato’s failing concentration and passed him for third on lap 8 and Haryanto and Rossi had a great battle for fifth as well. By lap 10, Vandoorne was 1 second behind Lynn, and the rest of the pack was almost three seconds away. Johnny Cecotto had to go to the pits and the race looked over for him.

On lap 16, Vandoorne got very close to Lynn, but DRS didn’t ensure him the first place. King and Sirotkin battled for tenth. Lynn’s defense was truly impeccable and he repelled Vandoorne several times, and Haryanto has been repelling attacks from Artem Markelov until lap 22 when the Russian driver finally managed to overtake him.

By defending against Vandoorne for the most of the race, Alex Lynn scored his first GP2 victory with a 2.2 seconds advantage. Behind the two were Pierre Gasly on third, Alexander Rossi and Artem Markelov in top five. Rio Haryanto finished the race on sixth in front of Norman Nato, Arthur Pic, Daniel DeJong and Sergey Sirotkin who was on tenth.

The complete list was the following:

2015-Barcelona-GP2-Sprint-Table

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