Third podium of the season for Coletti in Bahrain

Bahrain's Feature Race held in Sakhir brought the third podium out of three races to Stefano Coletti in a GP2 Series where he is being ever more a protagonist.

Stefano Coletti

Photo by: GP2 Media Service

After the fourth time set yesterday in qualifying, the Monegasque in force at team Rapax produced an excellent start that made him overtake Felipe Nasr (Carlin) for the second place, as Marcus Ericsson (Dams) was forced to start from the pit-lane instead of the front row due to technical problems.

Coletti put a lot of pressure on the leader Fabio Leimer (Racing Engineering), inflaming the whole first lap with an interesting duel. Positions got stabilized afterwards despite the different racing strategies as some drivers opted to start on prime tyres and others on the options which ended up in first stints of different lengths.

After the mandatory pit-stop the situation did not change though and the chequered flag waved to the victory of Leimer who was followed by by Coletti and Rossi (Catheram Racing).

Stefano Coletti: "The start is one of my strong points and also in this occasion, as already happened in Malaysia, I managed to gain some positions. I tried to attack Leimer straight away because I knew it would have been complicated to get back even only a few seconds' gap.

Fabio defended himself quite well though and therefore I decided not to push too hard considering that the second place is still a very good result for the championship. It will be important to repeat this good result in tomorrow's Sprint Race to end in a good way a so far positive weekend".

Coletti keeps the lead of the classification with 54 points, with Leimer matching his score. Nasr is currently third at 36 points.

Stefano Coletti