ART Grand Prix’s Stoffel Vandoorne was crowned the GP2 champion at Yas Marina Circuit after the final race of the season – the sprint race Saturday – was called off following a massive crash that took out seven cars in the first lap itself.
The crash caused substantial damage to the barriers. With the red flag shown on the first lap and the barriers not repaired in time, the event was cancelled and no points were awarded.
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Trident’s Raffaele Marciello and Frenchman Pierre Gasly touched in the middle of the grid, sending Gasly into a spin.
The Frenchman ended up going around and rolling back into the pack, which sent Daniel de Jong, Norman Nato, Nicholas Latifi and Sean Gelael straight into the barriers. Sergey Sirotkin took avoiding action, as did Arthur Pic, who then hit Sirotkin while rejoining and took him out of the race as well.
Briton Alex Lynn, of DAMS, who started at the front of the reverse grid, was leading at the time.
Record breaker, @svandoorne crosses the line in Abu Dhabi to take his 11th #GP2 win! Cracking performance, Stoff. pic.twitter.com/NqK9l5yULb
— McLaren (@McLarenF1) November 28, 2015
Although no points were awarded, it did not affect the standings as both the driver and team championship was determined well before the series reached Abu Dhabi.
Belgium’s Vandoorne, who won the feature race on Saturday night, stalled off the line and yet finished his record-breaking season on 341.5 points, a massive 160 points ahead of the second-placed Alexander Rossi (181.5 points).
The 23-year-old Belgian was thrilled with his season, in which he won seven out of 11 feature races, said: “It’s my seventh win. It’s a new record in GP2, no one has done this before. I’m just really pleased with the work we’ve done again. It shows that we’ve dominated the season from beginning until the end.”
Vandoorne is joining the McLaren team as their reserve driver in 2016.
ART Grand Prix were the team champions on 410 points, with Racing Engineering second on 241.5 and DAMS on 220.
