After the high of Giorgio Pantano's first win for the team in Saturday's Istanbul feature race, it was more a case of mixed fortunes for Racing Engineering drivers in Sunday's sprint.
While Pantano finished a competitive fourth, and continues to lead the drivers' championship, team-mate Javier Villa - who had claimed two points for seventh on Saturday - fell victim to an over-optimistic passing manoeuvre from Karun Chandhok and saw his hopes of another scoring finish disappear in a cloud of tyre smoke
The two Racing Engineering cars found themselves running together in the early stages as Villa made a slightly slow getaway from second on the grid and Pantano made up several spots from the outside of row four. Several drivers spun off or had mechanical problems on the first lap, causing the safety car to come out and, when racing resumed on lap four, a move from Romain Grosjean on Villa pushed the Spaniard back into the clutches of his more experienced team-mate.
Trying to re-pass Grosjean cost Villa another spot, this time to Pantano, before Mike Conway also found a way through to claim fifth place, and, all of a sudden, the Racing Engineering car was in a battle with Chandhok for sixth. It all went wrong on lap nine when Chandhok, looking for a gap that wasn't there, dived inside Villa, leading to the two cars making contact. While Chandhok spun, Villa ran wide, losing more places and getting dirt on his tyres that led to him spinning and dropping to 17th place. He only recovered to 15th by the chequered flag.
It was a bit difficult today," Villa admitted, "I didn't have a good start and was third, but this was okay, but then I had some problems and it was very difficult, as I wasn't able to keep up with others on the straight line. In the last corner, there was another car that caused me to spin - I lost many positions and tried to push [to recover], but there simply was a difference. We will now check things properly in order to see what the problem was.
![Giorgio Pantano - Racing Engineering [pic credit: GP2 Series]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/438549.jpg)
