Sakhir International Circuit, Bahrain – 18/04/2015
Car #22 – Marlon Stockinger – P11
Car #23 –Richie Stanaway – P15

Race distance: 173.184 km
Race length: 32 laps / 60 mins
Tyre use: P Zero medium pit to P Zero soft
Weather: Air temp 29˚C / track temp 47˚C – Dry

In an action packed season opener Status Grand Prix finished their maiden GP2 race one place outside a point scoring position with Lotus F1 Junior Marlon Stockinger. Both GP2 rookies were hindered by the early safety car which handed an advantage to the option / prime tyre runners. At the end of the race Stockinger was able to match the pace of the leaders, making his way from 16th to 11th in the closing laps. Stanaway was unable to maximise his option tyres, taking the chequered flag in 15th place.

Marlon Stockinger “My first GP2 race was pretty interesting but I’m pleased with what we achieved. I was a bit worried at the start as I was struggling on the primes but in GP2 it seems that you have to just keep a cool head and look after your tyres. It was a really good effort from all the team, we were on point for this race and the guys did a great job in the pit stop. The result was that we managed to close in on a lot of people and I was able to make my way up to 11th from 23rd on the grid.

We just need to keep chipping away and I’m sure it will be no time before we’re in the points, so I’m confident for tomorrow that we can improve further still.”

Richie Stanaway “It was a bit of a disappointing first race for me and I thought we had the potential to achieve more today. I got a really bad start and in hindsight maybe we hadn’t really practiced this enough in pre-season testing. The race was really compromised in the first few hundred metres and from there we just didn’t go fast enough on the first set of tyres. I had to pit for options before I would have liked to, which made the end of the race difficult for me. The car wasn’t quite where I needed it to be today but we’ll focus on that tonight, assess the data and see what we can learn in tomorrow’s sprint race.”


ENDS