Rio Haryanto claimed his third sprint race victory of the 2015 GP2 Series season on Sunday at Silverstone with a dominant display.
Starting from reverse grid pole, the Indonesian driver went wire-to-wire to win the race by 1.9 seconds. Ferrari junior driver Raffaele Marciello finished second, with Red Bull youngster Pierre Gasly third.
“It was everything in the first lap,” Haryanto said after the race. “I knew I had to make a good gap, and I did a really good start and was able to pull away quite a lot in the first two laps, and tried to build as much of a gap as possible because this year DRS means the car behind you might have an advantage.
“I was able to maintain that, to pull the gap from the beginning, and to also look after my tires: it was not that easy, because I had some front graining, but in the end it feels really nice when you cross the line! Third win of the season, and so far it’s been a really good year for me.”
American driver Alexander Rossi enjoyed something of an eventful race, fighting from seventh place on the grid to finish fourth at the flag despite being hit with a time penalty.
After passing a slow-starting Nick Yelloly for fifth place, Rossi swept around the outside of Alex Lynn at Copse with a brave overtake.
However, given that he had put all four wheels over the white line when taking the position, Rossi was hit with a five second time penalty that would be added to his finishing time.
The fight for fifth place raged on until the end of the race between Yelloly, Lynn, Oliver Rowland and Saturday winner Sergey Sirotkin, who ultimately finished in that order. As a result, Rossi kept P4 in spite of his penalty.
For the first time in 2015, championship leader Stoffel Vandoorne failed to score any points as he finished ninth overall. The Belgian driver’s advantage over Rossi at the top of the standings has been cut to 65 points as a result ahead of the next round in Hungary.
