For the second time this season Javier Villa has taken advantage of the reverse grid system to claim a dominant lights-to-flag victory in the GP2 Series sprint race at the Nurburgring.
Following on from his breakthrough victory at Magny-Cours, Racing Engineering's Villa was similarly imperious as he made the most of his pole position by virtue of his eighth place finish in the feature race to simply pull away and cross the line a comfortable winner.
Only the second driver, after
Timo Glock in the first race, to win two races this year, Villa was joined on the podium by Japanese duo Kohei Hirate and
Kazuki Nakajima, the former recording his best finish of the year and the latter making it four podium finishes in a row.
From the start, 19-year-old Villa made a superb getaway and together with a rather laboured first few corners from fellow front row sitter Adrian Zaugg, soon established a commanding lead over the South African.
Hirate was next up after a good start managed to get him ahead of Trident team-mate Pastor Maldonado, while Nakajima, Lucas di Grassi, Giorgio Pantano and Timo Glock followed closely. Further back, Andi Zuber stalled, necessitating a push-start, which duly led to a drive-through penalty, a punishment shared with Sebastien Buemi when he jumped the getaway.
However, for di Grassi and Pantano they proved a little too close, the Italian clipping the ART driver and pushing him onto the kerbs, the lost momentum seeing Glock leap up two positions into fifth. The clash however managed to catch Nicolas Lapierre just behind out, the Frenchman innocently trying to avoid the drama ahead and ending up being squeezed out by Ernesto Viso, forcing him out of the race.
Like the feature race though, there was not too many incidents to speak of save for the slight contact that decided second place when Hirate made a move on the out of shape Zaugg heading into the NGK bend, the pair touching briefly and sending the Arden driver off the track and out of the race.
