Arthur Pic endured further frustration in his 2015 GP2 Series campaign at Silverstone when a post-race penalty for the Feature race demoted the Frenchman from sixth to fourteenth.
The start of the weekend looked promising as he set the sixth fastest time in Friday morning practice before qualifying in fifth place for Saturday’s feature race in the brand-new Campos Racing chassis.
Unfortunately the race would be a different matter and suffered from the start of the race when he was jumped by three rival drivers as wheelspin bogged him down. Pic fought hard to gain the position back and fought hard with Red Bull Junior driver Pierre Gasly who started alongside him.
A slow pitstop on lap 22 would see Pic exit in a group of seven drivers for the final place on the podium which was at the time occupied by British driver Jordan King. A hard fought drive would see Pic move pass Nick Yelloly and Oliver Rowland as he closed in on King, unfortunately it would not be the Campos Racing drivers day as he made contact with King’s car, sending the Briton in to a spin.
While Pic would finish sixth on track a 20-second post-race penalty for the incident with King would see him classified in fourteenth place.
“I was surprised to see King slow down that much in the final corner,” commented Pic afterwards. “You would normally take that corner flat-out. As soon as he braked, I tried to steer left in order to dodge him but there was just not enough room.
“This result is all the more frustrating after we’d been on the pace again with the new chassis. I could have secured the third fastest time in qualifying if I hadn’t jumped out of gear during my best flying lap.
“Overall, we had the speed to fight for the podium here at Silverstone but the penalty and poor starts led to another disappointing outcome. In fact, we’ll need to look into the excessive wheelspin and the clutch before our next meeting.”
With the penalty in place Pic would line up in fourteenth place for Sunday’s Sprint race and a bad start would see him drop down to twenty-third place on the opening lap. By the end of the race Pic had fought hard but could only manage to grab sixteenth place.
The GP2 Series heads to the Hungaroring next on the weekend of 24-26 July, this could be the turning point for Pic’s season if he can repeat his 2014 performance which saw him take his maiden GP2 victory.
