APRIL 24, 2006

Piquet leads GP2 after Imola

Nelson Piquet Jr now leads the GP2 series championship lead after finishing finished fifth and second in the two races over the weekend at Imola. Piquet is followed in the championship by ex-F1 driver Gimmi Bruni, who won at the weekend for the new Trident Racing organisation. Bruni dominated the first of the two races on Saturday except for a curious period when Lewis Hamilton was in the lead by accident. The McLaren protege had jumped the start and pitted for a drive-through penalty when a Safety Car came out following Lucas di Grassi's sizeable crash on the eighth lap. Hamilton somehow managed to get out ahead of the Safety Car, thinking he was a lap down. His error resulted in a black flag and so Bruni retook the lead and was followed home by the Arden pairing of Ammermuller and Lapierre.

The second race saw a big shunt at the start (involving di Grassi who ran into a stalled Adrian Valles. When the race started again Hiroki Yoshimoto was leading, having finished eighth in the first event and with the top eight starting in reverse order. Ernesto Viso soon passed both Timo Glock and Yoshimoto to get ahead and won the race, to give iSport its first win in GP2. Piquet was second with Yoshimoto and Glock third and fourth.