Nathanaël Berthon has won his maiden GP2 race for Trident Racing – taking a commanding victory at the Hungaroring.
Indeed Berthon set up his victory in to the first corner of the first lap – making a smooth get away from the start line and avoiding the chaos that unfolded behind.
The accident was started by Sergio Canamasas clipping the rear of Daniel De Jong – causing both to spin. Adrian Quaife-Hobbs behind didn’t have any where to go and hit the back of Canamasas in the Caterham backed car, Johnny Cecotto was also involved in the wall of cars that bounded into his vision – it was a big disappointment for Cecotto because he had made a lightning start from quite a way back on the grid.
Bringing out the safety car to remove the broken cars littering turn one neutralised the race for a handful of laps but it didn’t affect the Frenchman from nailing the restart ahead of eventual second place man Mitch Evans – who was being begged for caution by his engineer realising the Kiwi would heavily degrade his tyres by pushing too hard around the Hungaroring.
That move almost paid dividends for the Arden International driver as the front runners upped their pace to try and exploit those who had not saved their Pirelli’s as efficiently. Evans was getting closer and closer to Berthon but had to settle for second place by only 2.2 seconds but was well ahead of Fabio Leimer who eventually crossed the line third.
Marcus Ericsson resumed yesterday’s battle with Felipe Nasr for the majority of the race and managed to beat the Brazilian to fourth place. James Calado was sixth a bit further back – the ART driver was followed over by Simon Trummer and Sam Bird.
In the GP2 drivers championship Stefano Coletti‘s lead is now down to six points with Nasr on 129, Leimer is on 110 and Bird in the RUSSIAN TIME car is on 92.
The next GP2 event is supporting the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa on August 24/25.
