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Rio Haryanto, a veteran of 69 previous GP2 Series, finally clinched his maiden victory in the sprint race of the season-opening round at the Bahrain International Circuit in Sakhir.
All eyes were on the 22-year-old Indonesian driver who completed the 23-lap event in 41mins 35.490secs in his Campos Racing challenger.
According to Haryanto this win has been a long time coming. He said: “The last race that I won was actually in GP3 in Hungary in 2011. I’ve been fighting a lot in my years in GP2, trying to get a win and I’ve made some mistakes. Finally, everything just came together.
“I had a great start and a great first lap. I was able to get into the lead quite early in the race. After that, I was able to maintain the gap to my closest rival until the end. It was a perfect race for me.”
After finishing second in Saturday’s 36-lap feature race, Haryanto made a good start on Sunday to quickly move up to third on the opening lap.
He then passed Russian Time driver Mitch Evans for second on the approach to Turn 1 on lap four with the assistance of the new 2015 Drag Reduction System (DRS). He then reeled in pole position starter Carlin driver Julian Leal, taking the lead at the end of the start/finish straight on lap eight.
After that, Haryanto kept a cool and calm lead ending the race with a 3.004secs gap ahead of runner-up and ART Grand Prix driver Stoffel Vandoorne.
The Belgian top title contender, Vandoorne, who won the feature race, came through from eighth to finish second.
Frenchman Nathanael Berthon of Lazarus, who started on the front row of the grid but made a poor start, was shuffled back to eighth on the first lap. However, he then drove a clever race to take third for his team, crossing the finish line 5.639s off the leader’s pace.
American Alexander Rossi of Racing Engineering, Colombian Leal of Carlin and Japanese Nobuharu Matsushita of ART Grand Prix rounded out the top six.
After the first two races of the 2015 Formula One feeder series, Vandoorne holds onto the championship lead with 43 points and Haryanto with 33. The Indonesian, in turn, has his own 10-point advantage over Rossi who is third in the drivers’ standings.
The American is followed in the drivers’ standings by Berthon, British Racing Engineering driver Jordan King and Romanian Rapax racer Robert Visoiu. The battle will continue on May 8 to 10 at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona in support of the F1 Spanish Grand Prix.
