F1 Fanatic

What a superb effort by Fabio Leimer to take pole position for the feature race. In the wet qualifying session he was up to two seconds faster than anyone else at times and ended up on pole by the best part of a second from Johnny Cecotto Jnr.

Jolyon Palmer starts third alongside Esteban Gutierrez. Stefano Coletti would have been fourth but he is one of four drivers to be sent to the back of the grid for having insufficient fuel in their cars after qualifying.

Also among them was championship leader Davide Valsecchi. He hadn’t gone well in qualifying anyway, having qualified mid-gird after his car came to a stop late in the session (you have to wonder if that was related to the shortage of fuel penalty).

This presents an opportunity to his title rival Luiz Razia, who is only a point behind him in the standings and lines up seventh. James Calado, third in the standings and 46 points adrift, lines up fifth ahead of Max Chilton, making it three British drivers in the top six for their home race.

After spending much of the session outside the 107% time Giancarlo Serenelli eventually made it in with a lap of 2’09.161, beating the target time by 1.3 seconds.

Some drivers were fortunate to make it in for practice having been stuck in the traffic:

As we had a coffee before heading out to the (other) pit lane for free practice, Jolyon Palmer’s father Jonathan came running in to hospitality. “Can I please borrow one of the GP2 scooters?” he blurted out. “It’s just that Jolyon and Marcus are still stuck in traffic outside the circuit, and we really need to go and get them out…”

http://paddock.gp2series.com/index.php?post/2012/07/07/Come-together

Giedo, if you wrap someone in cotton wool, they’ll probably be safe – but eventually you reach a point of diminishing returns and end up smothering them.

Keith, I would take issue with the ‘conspiracy’ theory with Calado. In GP2 team mates aren’t really team mates. They are both customers paying the teams for their drives; they owe their teams and their team mates nothing. This is why their are no team orders and they are free to fight. So can’t believe Calado helped out Gutierrez, but accept that the team might have told him to stop at a strategic point on the circuit.

To be honest, I’ve totally lost interest in the series this year. I usually follow it because I like to see the up-and-coming talent, but this year there are simply too many pay drivers filling up competitive seats and uncompetitive rookies – like Trummer – taking up the rest. Only a handful have any promise to them. I’d say that this is a result of the series expanding to include rounds in Malaysia, Bahrain and Singapore; it’s just made the category too expsenive.

GP3 is where it’s at these days. The front end of the grid is competitive, and there’s a few very promising young talents in the likes of Ellinas and Visoiu. I wouldn’t be surprised if teams start doing what Williams have done with Valterri Bottas, and start recruiting them straight out of GP3, and then setting up competitive programs for them in higher categories like GP2.

Well, the GP3 race they just had was bonkers. There’s no other word for it, and I doubt we’ll see anything like it in GP2.

Gerhard Berger has apparently been put in charge of a commission to make some of the feeder series more relevant – particularly Formula 3, which has been sufferin from declining numbers – and to try and inject some life back into them. Hopefully he can do something to address this problem of the mid-level feeder series being too expensive for most drivers.

Yep, the cream rose to the top in the sprint race – another decent race for Silverstone this morning.

Can’t help wondering how Razia and Valsecchi would get on against all the top Renault 3.5 guys. But you can only beat who’s in front of you, and those two are showing they know how to look after a set of Pirellis, as well as race hard and cleanly. I believe they deserve a shot at F1, although Bottas and Rossi seem to be next in line, thanks to connections rather than recent racing form.

GP2′s in good hands if promising drivers like Nasr and Calado stick around, but if Felix da Costa was joined in FR3.5 by, say, Vainio and Evans from this strong GP3 field, then more F1 teams could be looking towards the Renault series, not just Toro Rosso.

Not so clever behind them – Gutierrez wins the Maldonado Award for his brainless last-lap move, losing control on a wet kerb and wiping out Cecotto.

Great drive by Razia in the Sprint race – he clearly had kept a little in reserve for whatever Valsecchi could throw at him.

Solid drive by Nasr too for third. But surely Gutierrez will get a penalty for the collision with Cecotto?

As for the pay driver thing, I agree it’s frustrating. I was particularly annoyed to see Dillmann get dropped. But I think not watching the races because of it is cutting your nose to spite your face. That was an excellent race and the top three all drove excellently.