Pastor Maldonado has collected his sixth, and toughest, win of the season in Saturday’s feature race at Spa Francorchamps, benefiting when polesitter Jerome d’Ambrosio stopped late in the race and then hanging on against a huge push in the closing laps to win by just 0.2 seconds from Alvaro Parente and Romain Grosjean.
The Venezuelan had to work had all day for the victory: he held station behind d’Ambrosio when the lights went out and fought off a huge push from title rival Sergio Perez, who got a storming start from seventh on the grid to P3 just behind Maldonado and ahead of Oliver Turvey out of Ste Devote, while behind them Dani Clos was delayed by a stalled Fabrizio Crestani and then ran over the rear wheel of Sam Bird: the pair were out on the spot, prompting a safety car to remove their vehicles.
After the restart it was clear that there were going to be 3 strategies: come in early and hope for the best, hold position at the front and do a normal stop, or stay out late and hope for rain. Grosjean, Luca Filippi, Perez and Charles Pic went for the former, having a battle between themselves for points finishes until the Mexican was given a drive through for speeding in the pitlane, handing him a monster job just to keep his title hopes alive.
At the front d’Ambrosio and Maldonado came in together on lap 8: the Belgian was slightly delayed and the win looked to be out the window as his rival sliced back into the pitlane just in front of his nose: when the pair caught up to a slow (but un-pitted) Vladimir Arabadzhiev the Venezuelan ran through quickly but d’Ambrosio lost over 5 seconds before he followed, with the race looking like it was finished.
But d’Ambrosio was determined to make up for this season’s bad luck with a glorious home victory: a string of fast laps saw the Belgian back in front of Maldonado by lap 18, and with seven to go was just waiting for Parente to finally make his stop and hand him the lead back. But it was not to be: a malicious mechanical gremlin put paid to the drive of the race, handing the advantage back to the series leader.
Parente had clearly waited for the storm which didn’t come, finally pitting with 3 laps remaining: the fresh rubber gave him a small chance and he took it, pulling 5 seconds out of Maldonado’s lead and pushing him all the way round the final lap, but the wily Venezuelan held his nerve to greet the chequered flag 0.2 seconds ahead of the series returnee.
Behind them Grosjean pulled himself out of some early battles and into the clear air to pick up a podium in his second race weekend of the season, while Pic held on from Filippi for fourth place. Turvey was next across the line, denying a late race charge from Perez, who will console himself with a front row start this morning in the sprint race next to Rodolfo Gonzalez.
POS NO DRIVERS TEAMS LAPS TIME GAP INT. KPH BEST LAP
1 15 P. MALDONADO Rapax 25 52:27.763 200.114 1:58.452 6 2 20 A. PARENTE Scuderia Coloni 25 52:28.006 0.243 200.099 1:58.390 25 3 12 R. GROSJEAN Dams 25 52:32.529 4.766 4.523 199.812 1:58.950 8 4 16 C. PIC Arden International 25 52:41.578 13.815 9.049 199.240 1:59.183 25 5 5 L. FILIPPI Super Nova Racing 25 52:43.848 16.085 2.270 199.097 1:59.097 23 6 9 O. TURVEY iSport International 25 52:48.880 21.117 5.032 198.781 1:59.537 24 7 4 S. PEREZ Barwa Addax Team 25 52:49.476 21.713 0.596 198.743 1:58.585 6 8 17 R. GONZALEZ Arden International 25 52:55.138 27.375 5.662 198.389 1:59.851 13 9 3 G. VAN DER GARDE Barwa Addax Team 25 52:58.597 30.834 3.459 198.173 1:59.707 16 10 24 J. CECOTTO Trident Racing 25 53:00.105 32.342 1.508 198.079 1:59.632 10 11 8 C. VIETORIS Racing Engineering 25 53:00.535 32.772 0.430 198.052 1:59.748 11 12 19 F. LEIMER Ocean Racing Technology 25 53:01.405 33.642 0.870 197.998 1:59.335 9 13 6 M. ERICSSON Super Nova Racing 25 53:02.695 34.932 1.290 197.918 1:59.628 11 14 1 J. BIANCHI ART Grand Prix 25 53:08.060 40.297 5.365 197.585 1:59.640 13 15 25 A. ZAUGG Trident Racing 25 53:09.153 41.390 1.093 197.517 1:59.721 12 16 14 L. RAZIA Rapax 25 53:13.316 45.553 4.163 197.260 1:59.182 14 17 18 M. CHILTON Ocean Racing Technology 24 52:58.096 1 LAP 1 LAP 190.270 2:00.316 9 18 10 D. VALSECCHI iSport International 24 53:48.989 1 LAP 50.893 187.271 1:58.285 24 19 21 V. ARABADZHIEV Scuderia Coloni 22 46:57.392 DNF 196.731 2:00.440 9 NC 11 J. D'AMBROSIO Dams 20 42:21.198 DNF 198.269 1:58.340 5 NC 26 M. HERCK DPR 18 39:30.346 DNF 191.285 1:59.506 12 NC 27 F. CRESTANI DPR 2 5:48.866 DNF 143.270 2:01.417 2 NC 2 S. BIRD ART Grand Prix 0 DNF NC 7 D. CLOS Racing Engineering 0 DNF
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