2014 GP2 Series Season Preview – Part 1 – History of GP2

2014 is the tenth season of the GP2 series.  There have been some amazing races in the nine previous years, and some great champions, most of which you can now see plying their trade in Formula 1.  The first champion was German Nico Rosberg, who now races successfully for the front-running Mercedes-AMG team in F1 as team-mate to Lewis Hamilton, who won the second GP2 championship in 2006 as a rookie.

Here we take a look back at the past champions of the GP2 series, plus a quick look back at the inaugural race weekend back in 2005 when GP2 was born, having risen from the ashes of Formula 3000.

Past Driver and Team Champions

 First Race Weekend – April 23^rd-24^th 2005 – Imola

The first GP2 series weekend took place over the weekend of April 23^rd-24^th 2005 at the Imola circuit in Italy as support to the Formula 1 San Marino Grand Prix weekend.  There were twelve teams of two drivers, of which five remain to this date (ART Grand Prix, DAMS, Racing Engineering, Campos Racing and Arden International).

There were two former Formula 1 drivers in the first race in the form of Giorgio Pantano and Gianmaria Bruni, while four of the drivers to participate in the first race would eventually end up in F1 (Scott Speed, Nelson Piquet Jr, Nico Rosberg and Heikki Kovalainen).

April 23^rd – Feature Race Qualifying Results – Top Six

 April 23^rd – Feature Race Results – Top 6

Fastest Lap: Ernesto Viso – Venezuela – BCN Competicion – 1:35.257s

April 24^th – Sprint Race Results – Top 6

Fastest Lap: Nicolas Lapierre – France – Arden International – 1:33.871s