Racing Engineering's decision to concentrate its winter preparations on fettling the new Dallara for GP2's 'summer' season paid off when the team was the only one to bring both its two cars home in the two races - and was the only one to get both its drivers in the points by the end of the weekend.
Although qualifying did not go according to plan for Alfonso d'Orleans Borbon's team, with Javier Villa being confined to the bottom half of the grid, new signing Giorgio Pantano managed to maintain the pace of pre-season by taking fifth spot and giving himself a chance of a podium in Saturday's feature.
"We were a bit unlucky," the Italian veteran - now in his seventh year of F3000 an GP2 - commented, "When I put the new set of tyres on, [Bruno] Senna went off and I had this yellow flag for four laps. For sure, I could have been in the first row if not for that. I am positive for tomorrow though, as fifth is not bad and we are not far away."
Tension was high at the start of race one, and heightened after a stalled car necessitated a second formation lap. Polesitter Pastor Maldonado then made a dreadful getaway, while another car, several rows further back, also stalled, causing a shuffle in the order. Pantano had managed to keep in touch with the leading group, lying sixth at the end of the opening lap, but Villa lost out after a slow getaway and found himself back in the midfield.
With the safety car deployed on lap two, all drivers dived into the pits for their mandatory tyre change, and some excellent work by the Racing Engineering team saw Pantano resume in four, and quickly in pursuit of Andreas Zuber. With Adrian Valles holding up those behind, the first four cars soon distanced themselves from the rest of the field.
Although he subsequently dropped away from Zuber, Pantano was able to comfortably hold position to the flag, keeping new fifth-place man Vitaly Petrov some six seconds behind.
