Vandoorne wins his debut race

Stoffel Vandoorne got his first victory on his debut weekend in GP2. Julián Leal and Jolyon Palmer joined him on the podium in this first race in Bahrain.

Most drivers started on softs. Jolyon Palmer had a bad start from pole and lost many positions. Daniel Abt, who started 3^rd, also had many problems. However, the rookie Stoffel Vandoorne had a great start and got the lead of the race. Stéphane Richelmi went up to 2^nd position, followed by Stefano Coletti.

On the third lap, Axcil Jefferies had a big impact after contact when defending from Kimiya Sato, so the Safety Car was deployed. After the SC went in, almost half of the drivers did their pit stop to change to the hard tyre.

Seven drivers stayed on track, making their tyres last longer than the other, which would give them a huge advantage of pace at the end of the race. In the fight for the points, Pic overtook Richelmi for the 8^th place. He also passed through Evans and Haryanto, who were suffering a lot of degradation on their tyres and would end up losing a lot of positions.

With 3 laps to go, Leal started putting pressure on Palmer and overtook him for the third place, with Simon Trummer yet to pit. He finally pitted with two laps to go and went out 9^th, managing to overtake two drivers and finishing 7^th after having started from the pit lane. Takuya Izawa, also with softs, overtook Nasr for 6^th. At the end of the race Coletti was pushing Palmer but was not able to overtake him.

Vandoorne crossed the line first followed by Leal (who had started from P12) and Palmer. Coletti was 4^th followed by Pic, Izawa (starting 23^rd), Trummer and Nasr, who will start from pole with reverse grid tomorrow. Binder and Quaife-Hobbs also got points for finishing 9^th and 10^th.

Result: