I love Monza, but I must admit my fondness for the old place has taken a little bit of a dive over the past couple of days… We’d had a bad time last time out at Spa, but nevertheless hopes were high for our Italian Grand Prix support races in the GP2 Series. As it turned out I definitely had the speed to win, but a mistake on my part in the first race cost me very dear and we came away with nothing.
It all looked positive on Friday. The DAMS team gave me a good car and although I was only eighth in free practice we were really confident. I’d got baulked on my best lap but the car gave me a great feeling. Sure enough, qualifying was strong and I ended up fourth fastest, which turned into third when Mitch Evans was excluded. It was a solid session, no dramas, and put us in a good position. I was just behind my team-mate Pierre Gasly when we did our hot laps. He got a lovely little tow off Jordan King and took pole, but I was a little too far behind him to exploit it – in GP2 you have to be within two seconds of the car in front, to give you a small tow on every straight.
The race got off to a great start, with a fantastic battle on the opening lap with Stoffel Vandoorne, the championship leader, from which I emerged in second place. It was really hard racing but good and fair, and I managed to get past him exiting the first Lesmo bend. From then on I got my head down and tried to stay close to Pierre, who was leading.
Those of us at the front made an early stop to get off the option tyres and onto the prime for a long run to the finish – or so we hoped. Unfortunately I had a slow stop when the right-rear wheelgun got stuck, so I came out behind Sergey Sirotkin, while Stoffel – who’d pitted a couple of laps earlier so had his tyres up to temperature – was able to get past too on my out-lap.
With Pierre now out of the race it was looking really good for me. OK, Stoffel had got the undercut on me, but up until the pit-stop he’d been a bit slow, and I knew that Sergey was a slam-dunk cert to get a penalty for an unsafe release from his pit-stop.
Coming onto the straight I got the run on Stoffel and used the DRS, but everything got a bit confused because just in front of me Sirotkin was passing a backmarker. I think I was a bit unsighted and made an uncharacteristic error – I outbraked Stoffel, the backmarker, and myself, and took out Sirotkin. It was quite a spectacular up-on-two-wheels moment for me; not what I wanted to see…
It was such a shame because we’d been looking good for the win. If I’d made that moved on Stoffel stick, then I wouldn’t even have needed to pass Sirotkin because he’d have got a penalty. The car was very fast, I was very fast, and I came away with nothing.
The officials gave me a penalty for that mistake so I had to start Sunday’s sprint race from the pit-lane. Even from there I felt we could achieve a top-eight finish in the points, and I made good progress to be halfway up the field in 13th place within a few laps. Unfortunately there was a safety car – although that looks like it benefits those who need to make up places, it actually often doesn’t help, because it puts everyone back in a long line, all getting DRS off each other and hitting the rev limiter in sixth gear. As a result I took a long time to pass Johnny Cecotto Jr, which I finally did into the second Lesmo. Straight away I got fastest lap and passed Rio Haryanto too for 11th, but the laps just ran out to progress further.
It was a weekend that could have been really good – I honestly believe my third GP2 win was there for the taking, but that error on Saturday really cost us
