It has been a dominant Formula Two season for Andy Soucek, with the
Spaniard clinching the revived series' inaugural championship with three
races to run, and he continued his form with a convincing victory in the
first race of the season finale in Abu Dhabi.
"It feels very, very special," Soucek smiled after the race. "I've
never had that feeling. Obviously when you win a race you are always
happy and I am happier today than I was at Imola when I clinched the
championship. I'm negotiating for a seat next year in Formula One and I
think everybody is looking carefully at what I'm doing, so I really had
to perform well."
The victory was Soucek's sixth in fifteen races. Add to that his
three second places, and it's clear how the Spaniard has managed to
outdistance his championship challengers: no one else has more than two
victories, and his nearest rival, Robert Wickens, has five retirements
to Soucek's one. With his speed and consistency, it's no wonder Soucek
is 47 points clear of Wickens and the rest of the field.
It had been Wickens on the pole position for the start, but the Canadian
stumbled as the lights went green, and as Soucek saw a familiar P1
waiting for him, he wasted no time in claiming the lead into the first
corner for himself.
Mikhail Aleshin and Tristan Vautier, who was taking his first F2 start,
also made their way around the sluggish Wickens. Vautier, who moved up
from Formula Palmer Audi for the final race weekend, pressed Aleshin but
could not make his way past. Wickens, determined to make up for the poor
start, in turn applied pressure on Vautier, but it did not last long, as
he had to pull off with mechanical problems on lap five.
Aleshin kept Soucek in sight, but was not able to make in impression on
the champion. At the finish, the gap was 4.389 seconds in the Spaniard's
favour.
Vautier couldn't quite stay on Aleshin's tail, either, and the gap
stretched out to 3.256 seconds by the end of the race. Still, a podium
in his first race was more than a creditable result for the 20-year-old
F2 debutant.
It was no cakewalk for Vautier, though, as his fellow Frenchman Julien
Jousse, already a race winner in F2, was determined to score a fifth
podium of the season. His full-season experience was certainly an
advantage, but Vautier was not going to give in easily.
By the halftime mark, Jousse was close on Vautier's tail, after the
latter made a mistake, losing most of a second in one lap, and the
battle between the two would be the most spectacular of the race. Jousse
was driving at ten-tenths, his car skittering on the edge of grip. He
tried passes on the inside and on the outside, but Vautier held on firm,
scoring a third place on his debut, 0.335 seconds ahead of Jousse.
Philipp Eng took fifth place, over five seconds adrift of Jousse, and
with Mirko Bortolotti on his tail.
Tomorrow's season-ending race is not just for bragging rights, though,
as second place in the championship is still up for grabs. Wickens
holds a slim one-point lead over Aleshin -- with Bortolotti a further
seven points back -- after his DNF today.
However, he will be starting that race, too, from pole position, as he
claimed his fifth pole position in this morning's second qualifying
session, 0.067 seconds faster than Soucek, with a blinding lap as
the chequered flag came out to end the session.
While Wickens is well adrift of Soucek in the points, his qualifying
has been as impressive as Soucek's race form: five pole positions in
sixteen races, to three for Tobias Hegewald and two for Soucek. No
other driver has more than one pole to his name.
Eng was a close third in the session, just 38 thousandths of a second
behind Soucek, and will start behind Wickens for the finale, with
Nicola de Marco next to him.
With Hegewald and Kazim Vasiliauskas occupying the third row, Wickens'
main challenger for the championship runner-up position, Aleshin, has
his work cut out for him.
The young Russian starts seventh, next to his first-race rival, Vautier,
after his hot lap turned out to be cooler than it looked. Aleshin came
out early for his final run, and was able to set a time of 1:38.470 with
no traffic to interfere with his run, but it turned out not to be enough
for even the third row.
Bortolotti, who has an eight-point deficit to Wickens, needs a victory
with Wickens finishing no better than eighth. With Wickens on pole,
and Bortolotti mired in 13th grid position, that now looks like
a highly unlikely outcome for the Italian.
In the meantime, with both Wickens and Soucek focused on showing good
form to in order to secure top-level racing seats for 2010, another
hard-fought race can be expected as the "new" Formula Two series wraps
up its first season.
