20th place for Scuderia Coloni and Onidi in Singapore Sprint Race

Fabio Onidi and Scuderia Coloni closed the last round of the 2012 GP2 season in P20 after a race that saw the Italian driver fight to recover from the very back of the grid.

After that yesterday’s crash left the car driven by Luca Filippi too heavily damaged to be repaired on site, Onidi was the only entry lined-up by Scuderia Coloni for the Sprint Race but the team knew that a very difficult task was lying ahead: Fabio’s retirement with 8 laps to go in the Feature Race meant that he was classified in P19, and with a five places penalty being handed to him for the contact with Rosenzweig he had to start further behind in today’s Sprint Race, from 24th place.

This hinted to a very difficult race on a street track like Singapore, where overtaking isn’t easy at all, but Onidi and the team were ready to give it all.

At the start the Italian driver was quick off the line and blasted through the back markers to take P20, and then he drove a very aggressive first part of the race, passing Palmer for P19 and Cecotto for 18th place.

Fabio then sticked himself to the gearbox of Gonzales’ car, but in the meantime he had to cope with some car damage from a contact he had at the start. This caused a change in the balance of the car that got worse lap after lap and forced Onidi to slow his pace. Fabio coped with the issue in the best possible way and crossed the line in 20th place.

Paolo Coloni: “Obviously we didn’t get the weekend we were expecting, especially after clinching pole with Filippi on Saturday, but we still have to take the positives from this Singapore round. After winning in Monza we showed again that we had the quickest car on track taking both the pole position and the fastest lap in Race 1. The latter was particularly impressive because Luca posted it very early in the race, still with an heavy car, and despite that nobody could lap quicker than that.

Concerning today we knew that starting so far behind on a track like this was going to make things difficult, but despite that we were ready to try and recover as much as possible. We had a good pace and Fabio did a good job, but, some damage from a contact early in the race unbalanced the car slowing our pace a lot”.

Source: Scuderia Coloni