Canamasas achieved sensational debut with Carlin by finishing 5th in Saturday GP2 Series race held at in Barcelona. Canamasas´ recovery drive earned fifth place and new Carlin driver pulled off several impressive overtaking moves. It was a great start to the season
Sergio Canamasas shone in front of his home crowd at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in probably one of his best performances in the main F1 feeder series. On his debut with UK-based Carlin, Canamasas qualified 15th yesterday ahead of his new teammate, Germany´s Marvin Kirchhöfer.
During today´s Feature race, Canamasas had a stunning start on hard tires and passed seven cars on the first lap. A full course yellow was displayed as a result of a couple of incidents on the opening lap and shortly after the green flag the Barcelona-born driver passed Gustav Malja on the outside moving up to sixth. Shorty before his mandatory pit stop, Canamasas closed in on Artem Markelov, passing him almost at the same time when Sergey Sirotkin spun. Canamasas, running in fourth place, pitted as soon as the safety car was deployed to recover Sirotkin´s stalled car. On his set of soft tires, Canamasas went on charge to finish on the podium but tire wear dashed hopes for a better result finally bringing fifth place home. Despite Markelov passed Canamasas, the latter kept Alex Lynn at bay.
“It´s great to achieve such a nice result at my home round! Our fifth place result is amazing. My car was pretty good on hard tires and I was able to take the fight on hard tires. At the end, I wasn´t aware of time was running out, with a shorter race distance instead of the scheduled 37 laps. Otherwise, my strategy would have been different because I was driving smoothly in order to give a chance to save my tires”, Canamasas said visibly pleased with his result. For tomorrow, Canamasas added that “adjusting a few details, on hard tires and starting 4th on the grid, we will be in podium contention”.