Race – Belgium: Alexander Rossi wins his first victory of the year
He had been chasing it since the beginning of the season, and he finally got it: Alexander Rossi won the second race of the GP2 weekend. He beat his Racing Engineering teammate, Jordan King, and Mitch Evans. Stoffel Vandoorne had to settle for fourth place.
At the start of the weekend, Alexander Rossi told us in an exclusive interview that he was still aiming for the GP2 title and that his main goal for the weekend was to win his first race of the season. This has now been achieved as he was imperious during this Sunday morning’s race.
Starting third, he knew he had a great opportunity ahead of him. He did not miss it: on the first lap, he capitalized on the slight mistake of his teammate, Jordan King, in the Combes section. After that, he was no longer troubled in the race.
Behind, Stoffel Vandoorne was determined to climb onto his second podium of the weekend in front of his home crowd. The Belgian chose the outside line at the start to pass Mitch Evans, Sergey Sirotkin, and Artem Markelov, positioning himself behind Nathanael Berthon and Julian Leal. He soon overtook these two and started putting pressure on Jordan King.
Nevertheless, everything was called into question when the virtual safety car was deployed to allow the removal of Arthur Pic’s sand-trapped Campos. The two Racing Engineering drivers had no trouble maintaining their position while Mitch Evans was not as reactive as those in front of him, allowing Stoffel Vandoorne to slip away.
But the McLaren protege locked his tires at the bus stop chicane, allowing the Kiwi to catch up. This was followed by a battle on the Kemmel straight, where the Russian Time driver managed to get the better of the ART Grand Prix driver on the final lap.
However, in the championship, Stoffel Vandoorne maintains a strong lead as he now has 233 points, while Alexander Rossi only has 128 points. The American has managed to widen the gap with his two closest rivals, Rio Haryanto and Sergey Sirotkin, who both have 109 points.
From our special correspondent at Spa-Francorchamps
