Charles Pic at the top

Charles Pic bagged his first GP2 Asia win today in Bahrain sprint race after overtaking initial race leader Adrian Zaugg on Lap 4 and then pulling away from his closest rivals Giacomo Ricci and Javier Villa.

Today’s polesitter on the reversed grid Zaugg took off perfectly and kept the lead coming out of the first corner. Behind him, chaos ensued when Alvaro Parente and Sergio Perez came together while fighting for second place at Turn 4, with Perez earning a broken wing and Parente spinning into the barriers a few meters farther. More contacts in the field led to newly crowned Davide Valsecchi and countryman Luca Filippi having to go back to the pits to fix their damaged cars.

Once the dust settled a little, leader Zaugg found it impossible to pull away from a hard-pushing Pic quickly followed by Ricci, Jules Bianchi and Villa. On Lap 4, Pic overtook Zaugg at the end of the backstraight, with Ricci following him in the next corner. But while Zaugg tried to retaliate, Bianchi got alongside him with all three cars side-by-side through the last corner, down the long straight and into Turn 1 where Bianchi and Zaugg eventually came together, leaving Ricci free to chase after Pic, Villa in tow. However, by then, Pic had already managed a gap of over two seconds. This left Ricci and Villa fighting for second place, with the Spaniard all over the Italian for many laps until Ricci picked up the pace, closing in the gap on Pic, but he was never close enough to pretend for the win.

The Top three then settled, there was still a lot of action behind to secure the remaining points, starting with Sam Bird charging from tenth to fourth and closely followed by Edoardo Piscopo emerging from fifteenth on the starting grid. Both men overtook Daniele Zampieri in the very last stages of the race. The Italian also handed the last point to Oliver Turvey two laps from the end. This single point scored by iSport International today offered the British squad the Series crown.

With one round left in the season, and both titles now decided, second and third places are still up for grabs. Giacomo Ricci moves up to second place two points ahead of Turvey, while following a strong weekend Arden now stands second in the team championship two points clear from DPR.