New Zealand’s Mitch Evans has taken a stunning win in the GP2 Feature race at Hockenheim in Germany overnight.
The young Aucklander rocketed through the field and into the lead from a lowly 15th place on the 26-car grid; after a broken front anti-roll bar frustrated his Friday qualifying performance.
The 38-lap was run in sweltering conditions at the German Grand Prix weekend, but the Russian Time team executed a perfect race strategy to manage their tyre wear as Evans sliced through the field.
“I can’t believe it; this is pretty special,” said Evans. “At the start I was hoping for a top eight finish which would have given me pole position for the sprint race. With six laps to go I thought I could hold on for a podium. The car was awesome but I wasn’t expecting to win. This is mega.”
The 20-year-old Kiwi – one of the youngest drivers in GP2 – kept his cool under intense pressure to cross the line just 0.4 second from McLaren F1 test driver Stoffel Vandoorne with Championship points lead Jolyon Palmera a fading third.
Just two weeks ago Evans claimed his first GP2 win at the British Grand Prix.
His back-to-back Feature race victories in England and Germany mean Evans has scored points in the last seven races; he maintains fourth place overall in the standings but has narrowed the gap to the top three.
The dramatic Saturday race at Hockenheim was the 200th since the Formula 1 feeder series began ten years ago. Skysport TV race commentator Will Buxton described the gritty drive by Evans as one of the greatest GP2 wins of the decade. The esteemed Autosport website in Britain described the performance by Evans as an “amazing drive.”
Evans struggled through Friday practice and qualifying and it was later found the car had a damaged thread on the front rollbar adjusting mechanism. Therefore the iSport engineers running the Russian Time team decided to start the race on the soft tyre compound. This strategy offered a chance during the early laps to overtake those ahead that started on the medium Pirelli tyre compound.
Evans was up to eleventh at the end of a fiery opening lap, having survived a touch with Alexander Rossi at the hairpin. His car was undamaged but Rossi’s steering was broken. On lap five, Evans was up to ninth.
Evans then passed Stephane Richelmi, who also started on the softer tyre, and Johnny Cecotto Jr on successive laps, but critically he didn’t make his mandatory pit stop to change tyres until lap 14 – leaving him a 24 lap run to the finish on the medium compound tyre.
Others who started ahead of Evans on the soft tyre, Arthur Pic and Raffaele Marciello, were running fifth and sixth when they pitted earlier – but both stalled, apparently due to overheating engines. This gave Evans another two places.
On his fresh medium rubber, Evans had to work his way through a queue of slower cars that had started on the medium compound. He also had to repass Richelmi, who had undercut him; and Sergio Canamasas almost ruined his strategy by being difficult to pass.
Meanwhile, at the front, Vandoorne had beaten polesitter Palmer off the startline to lead the opening 25 laps. However as Vandoorne rejoined the track after his pitstop, Evans swooped ahead and into the lead.
After initially dropping back by 1.5sec, Vandoorne caught up again, but the early advantage of the fresh soft rubber had been lost. The McLaren protege shadowed Evans to the finish, but couldn’t get close enough to attempt a pass and finished second by 0.414s.
Palmer finished third, while a desperate scrap for fourth went to Stefano Coletti after a wild encounter with Felipe Nasr and Johnny Cecotto Jr that was only decided in the closing laps.
This second 2014 victory for Evans marks the half-way point of the 11-round, 22- race GP2 season.
Evans will start on the outside of the fourth row for tonight’s (20.30pm Sunday NZ time and broadcast live on SkySport 4) sprint race in which the top eight Saturday finishers line up in reverse order. The forecast is for a wet race.
Results - 38 laps:
Pos Driver Team Time/Gap
1. Mitch Evans Russian Time 58m15.099s
2. Stoffel Vandoorne ART +0.414s
3. Jolyon Palmer DAMS +2.755s
4. Stefano Coletti Racing Engineering +20.191s
5. Felipe Nasr Carlin +20.687s
6. Simon Trummer Rapax +23.432s
7. Johnny Cecotto Trident +30.583s
8. Nathanael Berthon Lazarus +33.160s
9. Marco Sorensen MP +35.879s
10. Stephane Richelmi DAMS +36.857s
11. Rene Binder Arden +37.111s
12. Tom Dillmann Caterham +38.081s
13. Takuya Izawa ART +43.096s
14. Adrian Quaife-Hobbs Rapax +47.572s
15. Sergio Canamasas Trident +49.996s
16. Julian Leal Carlin +58.217s
17. Raffaele Marciello Racing Engineering +1m02.333s
18. Andre Negrao Arden +1m04.818s
19. Arthur Pic Campos +1m05.181s
20. Daniel Abt Hilmer +1m09.082s
21. Conor Daly Lazarus +1m09.244s
Retirements:
Rio Haryanto Caterham 37 laps
Jon Lancaster Hilmer 24 laps
Daniel de Jong MP 12 laps
Alexander Rossi Campos 5 laps
Artem Markelov Russian Time 0 laps
