GP2 Asia: Duel in the desert
3 February 2010
Previewing GP2 Asia at Yas Marina
The up-and-coming stars of junior single-seater racing kick off their 2010 season in Abu Dhabi at the end of this week with the second round of the 2009-10 GP2 Asia Series.
Italian Davide Valsecchi, who has been in GP2 since the beginning of 2008, currently leads the championship, but the highest-placed of the drivers in the Castrol Rankings is a man who will be making his first GP2 start on Friday evening: Ferrari protege Jules Bianchi.
The Frenchman is a driver everyone has been getting excited about over the past couple of years. The nephew of 1960s Formula 1 racer Lucien Bianchi, he dominated last year's F3 Euro Series and steps up to the main GP2 series this year with ART Grand Prix. To warm up, he's now contesting the next couple of GP2 Asia rounds with ART, and will look to move up from his current 66th position in the Castrol Rankings, 16 ahead of 82nd-placed Valsecchi.
Apart from this pairing, the other driver on the grid who is in the top 100 of the Castrol Rankings is Dutchman Giedo van der Garde. The 2008 Formula Renault 3.5 Series champion was a race-winner in his rookie GP2 season last year, and now switches to the Barwa Addax team, which he will race for throughout 2010. He is currently 93rd in the Castrol Rankings.
Joining van der Garde at Barwa Addax is Mexican Sergio Perez, who is at 101st - expect him to have nosed into the top 100 by the time everything winds up at the Yas Marina circuit on Saturday night.
The driver to beat in the second race could well be Christian Vietoris, the German who won race two at the opening round three months ago. The second race on each GP2 weekend is formed by reversing the top eight finishers from race one, and Vietoris made a habit of winning these reversed-grid races not only in last year's F3 Euro Series - where he kept Bianchi's title mathematically within sight much longer than he should have - but carried it over into his GP2 debut!
GP2 veterans Javier Villa and Luca Filippi have been racing in the category since Bianchi was still in karting! But they are likely to be a force with the Super Nova and Meritus teams respectively. They sandwich Vietoris in the Castrol Rankings: Villa is 107th, Vietoris 121st, Filippi 127th.
British GP2 newcomers Sam Bird, Oliver Turvey and Max Chilton all lie in the top 200 in the Castrol Rankings. While Bird and Chilton have graduated from F3, Turvey moves up from Formula Renault 3.5, in common with Frenchman Charles Pic, who had disappointing results on his GP2 debut but should go much better this time around.
The Castrol Rankings is based on drivers' measurable performance over the last 12 months, including everything from their grid position to fastest laps. For further information on how the Castrol Rankings scores are calculated, click here.
