What a fantastic day for Javier Villa and Racing Engineering as the young Spaniard totally dominated Sunday’s Sprint Race with a flag to flag victory.
The GP2 cars lined up under sunny skies with Javier sitting on pole in his Racing Engineering Dallara following his great drive in yesterday’s Feature Race.
As the lights went off Javi made an absolutely perfect start leaving the other cars floundering in his wake as he pulled out 3 car lengths by the first corner. Following his prediction from yesterday Javi than began to push hard and by the end of lap 1 he was over a second ahead of the rest of the field. Amazingly lap 2 saw him a tenth faster than yesterday’s fastest lap and one more lap saw the Repsol/Telefónica car an incredible 3.6 seconds ahead of second man Adrian Zaugg.
From then on it became an object lesson in how to dominate a race as Javi pulled away at half a second a lap. Showing how fast he was going Javi dropped a wheel in the dirt in the final corner on lap 6 as his lead moved out to over four seconds by lap 11.
With the rest of the drivers unable to challenge the flying Spaniard Javi kept inching away more and more and his cause was further improved when his two closest pursuers, Zaugg and Hirate made contact in the first corner which saw Zaugg retiring and Hirate loosing time. Javi was now seven seconds to the good and he began to concentrate on keeping the gap steady over the remaining laps.
There was a moment of panic when the Racing Engineering car missed the chicane with a lap to go but such was his lead the couple of seconds he lost made no difference and the delighted Javi crossed the line as the Racing Engineering team cheered him on. For Ernesto Viso it was a case of continuing to learn about his car whilst playing himself back into the world of GP2.
Ernesto made a good start and was running in 9th in the early laps. Fighting off an over-enthusiastic passing attempt from Lapierre at the Veedol Chicane that saw the Frenchman spin out Ernesto soon found himself locked in a battle with Rodriguez and Pantano. Although he was unable to challenge Pantano the quick Venezuelan began to gradually pull away from Rodriguez eventually building up a two second lead as he crossed the line to finish a very promising 8th. Clearly he will soon be back to the form all at Racing Engineering know he is capable of.
Alfonso D'Orleans(team principal): ”What can I say? I am totally ecstatic! Javi made a very good start and quickly pulled away and did what he knows how to do, showing up the great champion he is. This second victory confirms him as a real winner and removes any doubts that anybody could still have about his talent. Thanks to Telefónica, Repsol and Mapfre for backing him when very few believed, this shows once again that we all were right! Regarding Ernesto, today the car was better albeit still with a little oversteer but I think we’ve already found the right direction to work on and to keep improving.”
Javier Villa (driver car 14): ”On the grid I was a bit nervous as we had had a few problems yesterday but I had a really fast start and built an advantage in the first laps. My pace was good and when Zaugg increased his I could still keep opening out the gap. I kept pushing until the very end and that's why I missed the chicane, I decided to go straighton and then slow down the next lap to avoid any problem and win the race.”
Ernesto Viso (driver car 15): ”It has been quite a monotonous race actually. We keep improving and we have to go on working in this direction. I think we have already got a really good base to work from for the next races. Today the car was better, with no brake or accelerator problems as yesterday and with just a bit of oversteer.
