Photo by: GP2 Media Service
BARWA ADDAX TEAM GAINS ITS FIRST POINTS
GREAT COMEBACK FROM JOHNNY CECOTTO IN THE FIRST RACE. DANI CLOSE FORCED TO ABANDON BOTH
With a little more effort than expected Barwa Addax Team has gained its first points of the season thanks to Johnny Cecotto’s great comeback in the first race of this second consecutive weekend at the Sahkir International Circuit, Bahrain.
Johnny Cecotto’s run of back luck in qualifying continued when a problem with the brakes prevented him from racing in reasonable conditions. As such, he was unable to achieve better than the 20th best time in the first race. He raced with the handicap of having encountered a severe delay in starting. He had an astounding start when he overtook on the start-finish straight through a gap it didn’t seem a car could fit through without hitting the wall. However, after a somewhat risky decision he came into the pits very early. On the 9th lap he came back onto the track in 20th place. From there he really showed his potential, keeping up a very good pace which brought him back up to 7th position but after so many laps on such a demanding circuit he lost his tires and was just able to keep a place in the points. So he won his first two points though he finished just one place from being able to start on pole in the second race. In this race, he only got to the first curve as an incident between two drivers caused one of them to spin, blocking Johnny’s way and putting him out of the competition due to engine failure.
Dani Clos showed his potential in the first attempt at a fast lap in qualifying but in the second he was unable to get the expected result from the soft tires due to track conditions, which prevented him from improving his grid position for the first race. He made a good start from eighth position but lost out after choosing to take the first curve on the inside, losing a few places to those who found their way open on the outside. When the time came to think about moving back up, an unlucky mechanical fault put him out of the running. Somewhat frustrating given the low number of incidents of this kind. In the second race he found himself in the middle of the incident at the first curve, in which he was pushed from behind, his back wing damaged and the front one broken against the car in front. Although he came back admirably to the middle of the group he was forced to make a pit stop during the race to fix the nose. In the end he had to abandon when a wheel was found to have been affected by the accident and didn’t last till the end.
The middle part of the season will resume with the GP2 series championship, 8 European Grand Prix starting with the Spanish GP which will take place in Montmeló, Cataluña, the weekend of the 11th-13th May.
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