Patronise F1

The GP2 Series field headed to the Yas Marina Circuit for a slightly needless non-championship round to bring the curtain down on their 2011 entertainment, featuring a host of new names eyeing 2012 GP2 campaigns.

The non-championship nature of the event was a knock-on effect of the cancellation of the 2011 GP2 Asia Series. From 2012, the Asia events will be absorbed into an expanded main series calendar, meaning that for 2011, the Abu Dhabi GP2 round was a race without a championship.

Predictably, with the teams now focusing on next year's campaign, there was a huge number of changes up and down the field, as they tried out potential new talent in favour of running their old and slightly more haggard 2011 drivers.

That meant that there was no space for the top drivers from the main series season, the likes of Romain Grosjean, Jules Bianchi and even near-constant GP2 figure Luca Filippi not featuring in the field.

That meant that before the race, the few drivers carried over from 2011 were installed as the pre-event favourites. At Lotus ART, big things were expected from Esteban Gutierrez, while iSport's Marcus Ericsson and AirAsia's Luiz Razia also raced for their 2011 GP2 teams.

There was also the likes of 2011 regulars Dani Clos and Fabio Leimer to watch out for, albeit both driving for new teams in Abu Dhabi as Leimer switched to Racing Engineering and Clos moved to the Rapax squad. 

Practice and Qualifying

In the single practice session, it was Gutierrez who set the pace, with the 2010 GP3 champion setting a scorching pace for ART that saw him end up some half a second faster than his nearest rival at the end of the session.

Leimer ended up as his closest challenger, the Swiss driver who will share testing duties at Sauber with the Mexican in this week's Young Driver Test, moving up to second in the latter stages of the session, ahead of impressive GP2 rookie Tom Dillmann (iSport).

Another series returnee, Carlin's Max Chilton, was fourth, from Clos and Razia, from French Racing Engineering driver Nathanael Berthon and Ericsson.

In the qualifying session though, it was Leimer who took his first-ever GP2 Series pole position, topping the times as Gutierrez's pitch for top spot was ended with mechanical dramas that saw him stop out on track in the closing stages.

Clos took second place to share the front row with Leimer, while experienced GP2 faces dominated the session, with Josef Kral (Arden) and Razia lining up third and fourth, from Addax's Jolyon Palmer and Chilton.

Gutierrez ended up down in 8th place after his car failure, one spot ahead of Dillmann, who ended up the best-placed rookie on the grid for the feature race in 9th.

Feature Race

In the Saturday feature race, Leimer seized the lead from the start, using his pole position advantage to establish an immediate lead as his rivals squabbled. Behind, Razia jumped up to second while Clos and Kral collided at turn one, ruining both of their races.

Leimer then controlled the race to the finish, with Razia never looking like having enough to claw back his early advantage. An early stop during the mandatory pit window represented Razia's last roll of the dice, but it had no effect on the order.

The Swiss driver took the chequered flag nearly seven seconds clear of Razia, with the rest of the field ending up nearly 30 seconds behind the Racing Engineering driver. Jolyon Palmer inherited third place when Clos and Kral collided, and kept the position to the flag.

The 2010 FIA F2 runner-up held off the recovering Ericsson over the closing laps to secure his first-ever GP2 podium in his first appearance for Addax. Ericsson was left with fourth, while Italian driver Kevin Ceccon (Coloni) took fifth.

Gutierrez had looked in the hunt for a podium having jumped from 8th on the grid to fourth after the first corner fracas, but the Mexican driver sustained damage of his own on the first lap when he was hit up the rear by Stefano Coletti, necessitating a long stop for rear wing repairs.

That gave Ceccon fifth, while Dillmann's impressive GP2 debut ended with sixth place, ahead of fellow GP2 debutants Antonio Felix da Costa (Ocean Racing) and James Calado (ART), who finished 7th and 8th to secure the front row for the reverse grid sprint race.

Sprint Race

After Leimer's pole-to-flag win on Saturday, Calado repeated the trick in the sporter Sunday race, the ART man leading from the start and comfortably fending off the challenge of Ericsson over the 22-lap distance around the garish Yas Marina track.

Ericsson took second place from da Costa midway through the race, and closed in on Calado into the closing stages, but never really looked like mounting a serious challenge for the lead.

The second iSport car of Dillmann took the final step on the podium, inheriting the place when da Costa's impressive run was ended when he was handed a drive-through penalty for short-cutting a corner.

Dillmann ended a lonely third, with Palmer an equally distant fourth for Addax, while the real battle in the sprint race was for fifth place. Feature race winner Leimer looked the likeliest to take the place as he marauded over the back of Coletti in the closing stages, but contact between the pair knocked them back down the order.

That left Gutierrez to come through and take fifth, having worked his way up from 21st on the grid in a hugely-impressive recovery drive, with Ceccon sixth.

Air Asia duo Alex Rossi and Luiz Razia prepared for their Team Lotus F1 tests this week with strong runs to 7th and 8th, with the recovering duo of Clos and Leimer completing the top ten.

The win for Calado saw him pick up the 15,000 Euro prize offered by Pirelli for the best-performing GP3 graduate in the 'GP2 Final' event.

The GP2 field now goes into winter hiatus, with the unannounced but newly-expanded likely to see the 2012 season kick off at some point in March.