GP2 news
Grosjean powers to first victory of the season
09 May 2009 / Results / PhotosRomain Grosjean continued his domination of the weekend by winning the first race of the 2009 season from pole position in Barcelona. The Frenchman crossed the line two and a half seconds ahead of team-mate Vitaly Petrov in an impressive one-two result for the Campos team.
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A great pole position on Friday was helped by a great start for Grosjean. The Renault Formula One test driver pulled away and was never headed during the race, which was broken up by a safety car period in the closing stages. The leader was not phased by this, however, and stretched out a comfortable lead immediately on the restart.
The Frenchman's race was set up at the start when he outdragged front row starter Lucas di Grassi to the first corner, with Petrov and d'Ambrosio also slipping inside the Brazilian as they set off after Grosjean. The teammates swapped fastest laps over the first half of the race, and while the Belgian could at least keep them in sight, di Grassi was struggling as he was soon under pressure from a hard charging Luca Filippi.
The Italian was finally through on lap 13, with di Grassi pulling straight in afterwards for his pitstop, while up front Grosjean came in 3 laps later and re-emerging in P8 just behind Nico Hülkenberg, who had dropped to 18th after a poor stop but impressed everyone with a fine recovery drive. Two laps later the other front runners dived in and order was restored, with the Frenchman reclaiming his lead from his team-mate.
Di Grassi looked to have done enough after his stop to get his race back on plan, but Pastor Maldonado had other ideas: the Venezuelan was slicing through the train formed behind the slower Brazilian and was soon by, but with the pair both running wide into different corners the pack behind were caught out: Alvaro Parente got loose and ran over the top of di Grassi's car, while Diego Nunes had nowhere to go but into the collision.
The inevitable safety car compacted the grid with a few laps remaining, but Grosjean had enough left to hold on for victory just ahead of Petrov and d'Ambrosio, with Filippi pushing hard behind for fourth place ahead of Maldonado, Edoardo Mortara, Giedo van der Garde and Kamui Kobayashi who will start from pole position on tomorrow's reversed grid. With Grosjean also picking up the fastest lap of the race his early lead in the championship is from his team-mate, 13 points to 8.
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Paul Ricard
