Sam Bird has shown his challengers what he’s made of as he stormed to a lights to flag victory in the GP2 feature race at Spa.
Getting a solid start alongside James Calado, the RUSSIAN TIME driver made full use of the inside line at La Source and from Eau Rouge onwards the Brit never looked back to take his third victory of the season.
Also a winner at La Source was Alexander Rossi – the American nipped past Marcus Ericsson after the Swede ran wide. Getting past Ericsson as well was Jolyon Palmer but he lost out to a hard charging Felipe Nasr.
Before the positions could change too much more, a safety car was called following a high speed crash at the top of Eau Rouge by Daniel De Jong. It appeared that the Dutchman got a tap from behind, but thankfully the MP Motorsport driver walked away unscathed.
After the green flag flew again Carlin‘s Nasr saw his luck run out as he tried a risky move inside his team mate Palmer at La Source which saw him spin into retirement and give up his chance of moving into the GP2 series lead.
One man also experiencing a decidedly poor day was GP2 series leader Stefano Coletti, the Monegasque seemed to have a handle on the car and was running as high as third place before a poor pit stop on lap 12 shuffled him down the order. The black lining on the thunder cloud was complete when Coletti was run into by Dani Clos coming into Eau Rouge.
With Bird pitting his GP2 machine without incident the eyes of the crowd were on eventual second and third place drivers Ericsson and Rossi – dicing with each other throughout, Rossi couldn’t make the most of his speed advantage and eventually finished one second down.
In fourth place was Fabio Leimer having had a quiet afternoon to bring in a decent haul of points followed in by Tom Dillmann and Julian Leal.
In the GP2 points the top two remain static with Coletti on 135 and Nasr only six points behind. Leimer has used his points haul today to good effect pulling close to the two leaders with a healthy 122 points.
