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Entering its third season, this year's GP2 Asia Series was always likely to be a slightly awkward affair. Whereas the first two seasons had featured full calendars complete with races in Malaysia, Indonesia, Qatar and China, the 2009-10 schedule featured a mere four meetings, with two at the Abu Dhabi street track, and two at the Bahrain International Circuit. The series also lost two cars from the grid before the season got underway, when the financially wrecked Durango team were forced to withdraw.

Despite that, and a slightly dubious mix of GP2 veterans, journeymen and rookies looking to simply gain some experience before their debuts in the GP2 Series proper in 2010, the racing was rarely dull, helped in part by the first generation GP2 Series Dallara-Renault used by the series, which produced far better racing than the overly-aerodynamic second generation design used in the main series. With a third generation car on the way for 2011, the 2010-11 Asia series will take over the second generation cars, though, and it remains to be seen how that will affect the racing.

As far as the championship went, it was something of a walkover for Italian iSport driver Davide Valsecchi, perhaps not a man that had been earmarked as one to watch before the start of the season after an underwhelming couple of years in the formula. However, this year's series saw him finally get a seat with a competitive team, and he took that chance with some aplomb. Of the eight rounds of the series, Valsecchi won three and finished second in a further three. Only a first lap tangle at round 6 and a 4th place in the final race of the year blotted his near-perfect copybook.

Valsecchi was helped by the lack of coherence behind him. No one driver emerged as a serious contender, with the other five wins being shared around five different drivers, and Valsecchi wrapped up the crown with still three races to go, finishing with nearly double the points of his nearest challengers.

If Valsecchi's title win was surprising, some of the other race winners were downright baffling. Luca Filippi, veteran of 99 GP2 starts now across the two series and bane of The Elbow's life, somehow contrived to nab the runner-up spot in the championship, thanks largely to victory in the final feature race of the year, while the man that he beat to second in the standings was Giacomo Ricci, a journeyman Italian of little repute driving for the hapless DPR team. He managed to secure the team's first win in nearly five years at the final round of the season to wrap up an improbably successful season for the former backmarkers.

While some unlikely faces came to the fore, the pre-season tips for the top struggled to adapt to the GP2 lifestyle. Highly-rated Frenchman Jules Bianchi, the inaugural driver to feature on Ferrari's new young driver programme, had a relatively hapless time of it, impressing on occasion, with pole position at the third round in Bahrain and third place in what was his first ever GP2 race in round 3, but more often than not he contrived to crash or spin away his chance of glory. Meanwhile, 2009 International Formula Master champion Fabio Leimer failed to score a single point, and the crack DAMS squad who dominated the 2008-09 series flopped massively.

The race of the season was undoubtedly the second meeting at the Abu Dhabi street track, with Oliver Turvey triumphing in the feature race from his team mate Valsecchi, thanks to a dramatic bit of wheel banging which resulted in both iSport cars temporarily leaving the track and looking for a moment like they might have thrown a 1-2 finish away. Meanwhile, throughout the field, drivers proved that you really can overtake at the Abu Dhabi circuit, as tussles for position raged from start to finish.

In the end, then, Valsecchi was a comfortable champion, and he will continue at iSport in the main GP2 Series in 2010, hoping to prove that this title success wasn't just a default victory in a fairly meaningless season.

As for the GP2 Asia Series itself, assuming that they continue with the series into 2010-11, then it will face a big challenge to reassert its original principals. Cost-cutting was blamed for the pared-down calendar this season, but as well as failing to complete any sort of grand Asian tour this season, the series also abandoned its original plan to focus on showcasing Asian driving talent. Not one of the 34 drivers used throughout the four meetings came from the Asian continent, and before pressing on with next season the organisers might well want to re-evaluate precisely what the series is supposed to be, particularly as the demise of A1GP has left this series as the only 'winter championship' in motorsport's locker.

Valsecchi became the third GP2 Asia champion, it remains to see if he will be the last.

The top five drivers from GP2 Asia 2009-10

1 Davide Valsecchi
It would be hard to give anyone else top spot on this list. From a maximum possible 80 points, Valsecchi scored 56, and finished in the top two of each of the first five races to secure the title with still three rounds to go. The Italian's challenge now will be to follow in the footsteps of past GP2 Asia champions Romain Grosjean and Kamui Kobayashi and secure an F1 seat, though to do that he may well have to repeat his Asian success in the main GP2 Series in 2010.

2 Giacomo Ricci
Whether it said more about Ricci himself or the effort being put in by the rest of the grid is unclear, but Ricci and the DPR team enjoyed a transformation of fortunes up there with Lazarus in this year's series. After winning two races in the 2005 GP2 Series with Olivier Pla, the DPR team has finished in the bottom three of every GP2 and GP2 Asia series since. In the first two years of the Asia series, they scored just 8 points, but in 2009-10, Ricci led the team to third in the standings, picking up their first ever GP2 Asia win in the process at the final round. Whether or not they will be able to keep it up in 2010 remains to be seen, but it was a feelgood tale for the formerly useless bright yellow cars.

3 Luca Filippi
Credit where credit is due, despite Filippi's oft-mocked haplessness, he put in a decent stint behind the wheel in this year's Asia championship. After dominating the pre-season testing, he was expected to perform, and one win and two second places is a pretty good return for a driver who seems destined to spend the rest of his life in the formula. Remained capable of bouts of uselessness, though, as his spin in round 6 and his nerfing of Charles Pic in round 3 proved.

4 Alvaro Parente
Performed little more than a late-season cameo for the painfully weak Scuderia Coloni team, but after losing his Virgin Racing F1 test drive and seemingly having no real racing options for 2010, the former British F3 champion has played himself right back into contention with a hugely impressive couple of outings. Of the four races he competed in, he scored points in three and even netted a podium in the final round. He arrived late on the scene, but Parente scored all of Coloni's 12 points for the year.

5 Alexander Rossi
Ironically, as America's new F1 team was making headlines by slowly collapsing in on itself, Rossi was quietly establishing himself as the USA's hottest prospective future F1 driver. He was consistently in the top ten, comfortably outperformed Josef Kral and Fabio Leimer, who had graduated to GP2 from Formula Master at the same time as him, and but for a frustrating double retirement at the penultimate meeting of the season in Bahrain, could have had a shot at the runner-up spot, all despite switching teams during the season. He is still painfully raw around the edges, but with a drive for the crack ART Grand Prix team secured in the new GP3 Series for 2010, Rossi looks like one to watch for the future.

Season Results

Final Drivers Standings

11 Josef Král 8, 12 Jules Bianchi 8, 13 Michael Herck 7, 14 James Jakes 6, 15 Sergio Pérez 5, 16 Edoardo Piscopo 3, 17 Johnny Cecotto Jr 3, 18 Max Chilton 2, 19 Adrian Zaugg 1, 20 Vladimir Arabadzhiev, Yelmer Buurman, Daniel Zampieri, Roldán Rodríguez, Marcus Ericsson, Will Bratt, Luiz Razia, Dani Clos, Diego Nunes, Rodolfo González, Jake Rosenzweig, Fabio Leimer, Alberto Valerio, Plamen Kralev, Giedo van der Garde 0.

Final Teams Standings

6 Super Nova Racing 14, 7 DAMS 12, 8 Scuderia Coloni 12, 9 Ocean Racing Technology 9, 10 Barwa Addax Team 5, 11 Trident Racing 4, 12 Rapax Team 0.