Mike Conway stormed to victory in today’s race two in Monaco, leading from lights to flag to scorea dominant first win in the series ahead of teammate Ho-Pin Tung and Alvaro Parente.
With the weather looking gloomy overhead the Briton lit up his tyres as the lights went out toeasily cover his fellow front row starting teammate to be first through Ste Devote and lead thefield up the hill. Behind them Roldan Rodriguez was very slow away from third position andlocked his brakes into the first corner, compressing the rest of the field other than Adrian Valles,who cut inside to get by as mayhem brewed behind them.
Christian Bakkerud was caught out by an early braking Andreas Zuber and took a roller coasterride over the Piquet Sports car into immediate retirement, while the sister car of PastorMaldonado pushed wide to the left and squeezed Karun Chandhok into the wall and off again,taking both cars back across the track and into the opposite wall, prompting the first safety carperiod of the weekend.
As Zuber pitted for a new rear wing the order at the front was Conway, Tung, Parente, Valles,Rodriguez and Bruno Senna, with Andy Soucek making an astonishing start to move up toseventh place from 13th on the grid. With the track soon clear they were released once again,with Conway setting a string of fastest laps to build a massive lead over his teammate, whosemirrors were full of Parente’s Super Nova.
But on lap eight all of his hard work was undone when Giorgio Pantano tried and failed to get pastMarcel o Puglisi at the new chicane: Puglisi closed the door and the two drivers collided heavily,putting Pantano out on the spot, while at the same time Alberto Valerio lost his rear and spun intothe wall after Casino square, with the resultant debris for both incidents causing another safetycar period.
At the restart Conway just headed off into the distance once more as Parente continued his racelong quest for a way past Tung. With Valles being handed a drive through penalty for his startmisdemeanour the field behind him moved up one position but were unable to get in touch withthe determined Portuguese driver.
Conway reeled out the laps to claim his victory by 18.4 seconds ahead of teammate Tung, whojust held on from Parente to round out a 1-2 for his Trident team. Behind them the other pointspaying positions were filled by Rodriguez, Senna and Soucek, who scored his first point of theseason to finish a tough weekend on a high. Zuber claimed the fastest lap, although the point willgo to Conway because of Zuber’s pitstop, rounding out the repayment for the Briton’s wretchedluck in yesterday’s race one in fine style.
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