Pastor Maldonado took an emphatic race victory in the annual GP2 Series race in Monaco, repeating his World Series by Renault win at the same venue one year ago.
The Venezuelan led from lights to flag, easily dominating the rest of the field to take the chequered flag eight seconds ahead of veterans Giorgio Pantano and
Timo Glock despite twice losing time behind late safety cars. It was a crushing display of street circuit racing - containing pin-point accuracy so far missing from Maldonado's GP2 campaign - with no-one able to come close to the Trident racing driver as he spent just one lap out of the lead immediately following his pit-stop.
The victory was set up by a storming start from pole, where Maldonado was easily ahead of fellow front row starter Pantano at Ste Devote, as the rest of the field lost time avoiding Andi Zuber, after the iSport driver again stalled on the grid. Indeed, the leader's only scare came just before he was due to make his mandatory pit-stop, the Trident car washing wide into Rascasse, but narrowly avoiding the barriers. After that, Maldonado was very much alert, and kept his nose clean to the end.
Lucas di Grassi showed amazing reflexes to nip between the stationary Zuber and his temporary ART Grand Prix team-mate Sebastien Buemi, who was very slow to get away, putting the Brazilian into third through Ste Devote, ahead of Vitaly Petrov, Luca Filippi, Buemi, Glock and Bruno Senna.
Behind them, Andy Soucek got ragged into the first turn, was crowded over the kerbs and clattered into the hapless Karun Chandhok. While the Spaniard was able to continue, albeit at the cost of an early pit-stop for a new nose, the race was over for his innocent victim. Remarkably, however, that was the only first lap incident which, given last year's pile-up and the record of this year's class to date, was not expected.
