GP2 Asia

[elis]

The season gets under way in China next weekend & drivers were testing the cars at Shanghai over the last 2 days.

Certainly a bunch of familiar names

click here for entrants & testing results

[Nikki Katz]

I don't think that's the final lineup as the previous test a few weeks ago had completely different people. But they're running out of time and will have to field *someone* (well, unless people take a leaf out of BCN's book at the last race), so I think that most of the people on that list will end up racing where they are.
That and Yoshimoto appears twice in session 1!

The Asian series tends to have slightly lower quality drivers. Last year it was completely walked by Grosjean, who doesn't appear to be entering this year. Petrov also looked good but was easily beaten by di Grassi in the main series. But there's still some good drivers in there, so looks interesting.

[Nikki Katz]

Did anyone actually see this? I only saw the first race as I was watching F1 when the second was broadcast.
It was quite fun, but that's partly due to some really bad driving. It does seem like most teams aren't really taking this championship very seriously and have entered a number of drivers simply for sponsorship reasons. Most of the front-runners aren't taking part and the midfielders are now championship contenders. Why else would Yamamoto be on the podium down purely to pace? And where on earth did they find Chen???
I hope that there's more to come from van der Garde, he wasn't all that great. I'm sure Kobayashi could win it if he stopped crashing all the time, but he seems to have something of a habit of that.
Bamber was better than I expected though, never heard of him before.

[Mekola]

Earl Bamber has good experience from Formula V6 Asia, a series that uses the ex-F. Renault V6 European chassis since 2006.

[MikeD]

Did anyone actually see this? I only saw the first race as I was watching F1 when the second was broadcast.
It was quite fun, but that's partly due to some really bad driving. It does seem like most teams aren't really taking this championship very seriously and have entered a number of drivers simply for sponsorship reasons. Most of the front-runners aren't taking part and the midfielders are now championship contenders. Why else would Yamamoto be on the podium down purely to pace? And where on earth did they find Chen???
I hope that there's more to come from van der Garde, he wasn't all that great. I'm sure Kobayashi could win it if he stopped crashing all the time, but he seems to have something of a habit of that.
Bamber was better than I expected though, never heard of him before.

I agree.

The fact that Van der garde couldn't race the sprint race because he had to return home to collect a prize says something about the "importance" of this championship. And equally the fact that Mika Mäki cancelled his seat to focus on winning a title in a lower formula backs it up (IMO).

The only thing that keeps me interested in this years GP2 Asia is that's pretty difficult to predict the winner. Both DAMS drivers look strong, but other than that it was some pretty surprising results coming out of Shanghai.

Like you i was surprised about Bamber, but I have now followed him in A1GP, where he has scored 3 podiums from 4 races which is quite impressive (he hasn't done A1GP before).

[MikeD]

Maldonado will race 3 rounds for ART in GP2 Asia. One of the three rounds is expected to be round 2 in Dubai this weekend.