Patronise F1

The 2009 GP2 Series came to a close in a standalone event in Portugal, which saw Nico Hulkenburg underline his dominance of the series this year in the feature race, and the season close with a wonderfully silly series of events in the sprint race.

Feature Race

The grid level remained at 24 cars for the finale at the Algarve circuit, with the Durango team missing their second event in a row after claiming that they could not find anyone suitable to drive their cars due to the lack of an F1 support berth for the final rounds. The team also missed the Monza races after Stefano Coletti injured himself and destroyed one of the team's cars at Spa.

Vitaly Petrov secured pole position for the feature race in a hotly-contested qualifying session in his Barwa Addax car, from the surprising form of sometime Williams tester Dani Clos, who managed his best qualifying effort of the season for Racing Engineering, just four hundredths of a second behind the Russian.

Series champion Hulkenburg was 3rd for ART ahead of GP2 veteran Lucas di Grassi in the second Racing Engineering car.

The race itself was a battle between the top two in the drivers standings, with Hulkenburg blitzing past Clos at the start to slot in behind Petrov. The German driver found overtaking difficult around the Portuguese track, a characteristic that must surely improve it's chances of a grand prix contract in the near future, but leapt into the lead during the mandatory pit stop window.

From that point onwards, Hulkenburg showed why he had taken this year's championship so easily, marching away from the field to take the chequered flag by nearly ten seconds, wrapping up the teams championship for ART Grand Prix in the process.

Petrov was shuffled down in the pit stops, with oft-derided Super Nova driver Luca Filippi making the most of an aggressively early stop to leap up to second place, the Italian able to hold off Di Grassi and Petrov over the closing few laps to take his third podium finish of the season.

Petrov's 4th place at least ensured that he would finish as runner-up in the standings to Hulkenburg, in what was his third full season of GP2 racing.

Roldan Rodriguez came through to finish fifth for Piquet GP, while behind him, the woeful DPR backmarking team finally looked to have something to celebrate in a long and pointless season to date, when Romanian driver Michael Herck came through a breathless midfield battle to take what looked to be the team's first points of the season in 6th.

Alas, the team's joy was short-lived, as Herck's car failed post-race scrutineering on a ride height infringement and Herck was disqualified from the results. That promoted Japanese man Kamui Komayashi (DAMS) into 6th spot, with Davide Valsecchi (Barwa Addax) moving up to 7th and Andi Zuber (Coloni) into 8th place, giving the adopted UAE driver pole position for Sunday's sprint race in the process.

Clos failed to convert his promising grid slot into his first points of the campaign with a spin, while the main incidents of the final feature race of the season saw Edoardo Mortara's Arden car clash with Javier Villa's Super Nova entry on the opening lap, and home hero Alvaro Parente (Ocean Racing) collided with Sergio Perez (Arden) while fighting for 9th place.

The reddest face of the day though belonged to DPR stand-in Johnny Cecotto Jr, who somehow conspired to crash at the pit exit while making his way to the dummy grid.

11 Pastor Maldonado (ART Grand Prix) +37.551, 12 Diego Nunes (iSport) +38.478, 13 Javier Villa (Super Nova) +40.620 14 Davide Rigon (Trident) +58.812, 15 Ricardo Teixiera (Trident) +1:03.143, DSQ Michael Herck (DPR), R Alvaro Parente (Ocean Racing) 22 laps, R Sergio Perez (Arden) 22 laps, R Giedo van der Garde (iSport) 22 laps, R Alberto Valerio (Piquet GP) 4 laps, R Jerome d'Ambrosio (DAMS) 4 laps, R Karun Chandhok (Ocean Racing) 1 lap, R Edoardo Mortara (Arden) 0 laps, R Johnny Cecotto Jr (DPR) 0 laps.

Sprint Race

The curtain came down on another season of mixed driving skills with an appropriate mess of a sprint race on the Sunday at Portugal, as Luca Filippi scored his first win of the season after the front half-dozen drivers eliminated themselves from proceedings following a safety car farce.

Right from the start, the race had something of a typical end of the season, dead rubber look to it, as Johnny Cecotto Jr continued to trawl new depths of silliness, this time delaying the start after stalling on the dummy grid before the formation lap.

From the actual start itself, Vitaly Petrov stalled on the grid and was collected by the luckless Herck, who started from the very back after his disqualification in the feature race. The Romanian mad was helped from his car by safety teams and was taken away to hospital for observation.

That accident brought out the safety car while the debris was cleared, and at the restart, early leader Adni Zuber somehow managed to back the pack up, then charge past the safety car before it had entered the pit lane. He was followed by Davide Valsecchi, Kamui Kobayashi, Lucas di Grassi, Nico Hulkenberg and Pastor Maldonado, all of whom picked up drive through penalties.

With Filippi the only one of the frontrunners not to have pulled the strange mess of a trick, he then inherited the lead as his rivals served their penalties, and he was left to control the pace of the race to take the chequered flag and become the 11th different GP2 winner of the season.

He was followed home by the Arden machine of Sergio Perez, though he picked up a 25 second penalty after the race for the similar crime of overtaking the safety car. That promoted the second Super Nova car of Javier Villa into second place, giving the team a welcome morale-boosting result after a poor season.

Dani Clos secured his first points of the year after the disappointment of race one in 3rd, with home boy Alvaro Parente and the iSport car of Diego Nunes fourth and fifth, and the second iSport machine of Giedo van der Gardo picking up the final point of the season in 6th.

The penalised drivers struggled to make up the time they had lost through their mishaps, and finished well down the field, with champion Hulkenburg picking up his worst finish of the season in 16th.

But the German won't care too much, with the title already comfortably in the bag. He now looks set for a Williams F1 drive, while runner-up Petrov is in the frame for a drive at new team Campos Grand Prix. With Romain Grosjean already graduating to F1 from the GP2 field midway throuh the season, that would be a pretty good conversion rate for the feeder series.

For the other drivers not so fortunate though, they will need to regroup and come back stronger in the series next year. Those F1 drives won't wait around forever, you know.

11 Sergio Perez (Arden) +29.141, 12 Andi Zuber (Coloni) +30.244, 13 Karun Chandhok (Ocean Racing) +33.425, 14 Davide Valsecchi (Barwa Addax) +33.869, 15 Lucas di Grassi (Racing Engineering) +34.790, 16 Nico Hulkenberg (ART Grand Prix) +35.036, 17 Luiz Razia (Coloni) +39.546, 18 Johnny Cecotto Jr (DPR) +50.684, 19 Kamui Kobayashi (DAMS) +51.728, 20 Pastor Maldonado (ART Grand Prix) +52.557, 21 Ricardo Teixeira (Trident) +1 lap, R Roldan Rodríguez (Piquet GP) 5 laps, R Michael Herck (DPR) 0 laps, R Vitaly Petrov (Barwa Addax) 0 laps.

Final Drivers Standings -
1 Hulkenburg 100pts, 2 Petrov 75pts, 3 di Grassi 63pts, 4 Romain Grosjean 45pts, 5 Filippi 40pts, 6 Maldonado 36pts, 7 van der Garde 34pts, 8 Parente 30pts, 9 d'Ambrosio 29pts, 10 Villa 27pts, 11 Rodriguez 25pts, 12 Perez 22pts. 13 Zuber 21pts, 14 Mortara 19pts, 15 Valerio 16pts, 16 Kobayashi 13pts, 17 Valsecchi 12pts, 18 Chandhok 10pts, 19 Razia, Nunes 8pts, 21 Clos 4pts, 22 Rigon 3pts, 23 Herck, Nelson Panciatici, Stefano Coletti, Teixeira, Giacomo Ricci, Franck Perera, Rodolfo Gonzalez, Cecotto Jr 0pts.

Final Teams Standings -
1 ART Grand Prix 136pts, 2 Barwa Addax Team 122pts, 3 Super Nova Racing 67pts, 4 Fat Burner Racing Engineering 67pts, 5 iSport International 42pts, 6 DAMS 42pts, 7 Piquet GP 41pts, 8 Telmex Arden International 41pts, 9 Ocean Racing Technology 40pts, 10 Fisichella Motorsport/PPR.com Scuderia Coloni 29pts, 11 Durango 10pts, 12 Trident Racing 3pts, 13 DPR 0pts.