GP2 Series: Gasly takes the championship lead before the final race

  • Pierre Gasly

Pierre Gasly won the GP2 Series Feature race at Yas Marina Circuit and took the championship lead before the last race of the season on Sunday.

The Frenchman of Prema Racing had a pole position for the Feature race, while Antonio Giovinazzi, the championship leader before this race, started from the 6th place. Raffaele Marciello, who also was title contender, started from P8.

in the title hunt, started from the 8th position. The Frenchman had an excellent start and did exactly what he had to to keep the lead in front of Sergey Sirotkin and Nobuharu Matsushita.

Gassly was the first who did a mandatory pit and on the following lap, Giovinazzi did the same, while Marciello opted for the late pit-stop. Matsushita led most of the race but the Japanese still had to complete pit-stop. After 20 of 31 laps, Giovinazzi was on P12 and he was trying to catch his teammate Gasly in P7 on a different tire strategy.

Pierre Gasly

Pierre Gasly won the Feature race of the final weekend

With five laps to go, Gasly again was on the top of the grid as the drivers which were in front of him went to the pit. At the same time, Giovinazzi moved up to the 6th position with slim chances to make further progress.

Gasly won the race 6.7s ahead of Matsushita, who set the fastest lap of the race, while Artem Markelov finished third. Sirotkin finished 4th while Giovinazzi took 5th place following Norman Nato’s 5s penalty.


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Before the final race of the season, Gasly tops the standings with 219 points, 12 ahead of Giovinazzi who will need a help of fortune if he wants to take the title because only 17 points is on the stake.

Photo: gp2series.com

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