The first GP2 car is taken for its shake down run by Franck Montagny. 20 July 2004
This weekend saw the motorsport world bid a fond farewell to a car which has formed the bedrock of the careers of half the current F1 grid, as the original GP2 Series car completed its final race.
The GP2/05, designed by Dallara, powered by a 4l V8 Renault engine assembled and maintained by Mecachrome and run on Bridgestone Potenza tyres (grooved for its first season in 2005) made its track debut in July 2004 at Circuit Paul Ricard when Frank Montagny gave it its initial shakedown. Over the next few months, he and Allan McNish conducted the development work on the car which would race in the very first season of the GP2 Series when it was launched in 2005.
Despite some very public problems in its debut weekend at the San Marino Grand Prix (namely the electronics going haywire in practice and the brakes wearing out in the first race), the racing was exciting and the competition fierce. Brembo had heard rumours of the inadequacies of the initial brake supplier and had brought enough brake pads and discs for the entire field to Imola, storing them in a truck in a nearby carpark. When the problems arose in the first race, a Brembo representative asked the series organisers if they fancied switching supplier. They did. With reliability issues pretty much resolved with Mecachrome a few races into the season, GP2 established itself as unmissable racing.
Nico Rosberg was crowned the first champion in 2005, beating Heikki Kovalainen and Scott Speed to the crown and all three were promoted to Formula 1, starting a trend which has seen 17 drivers promoted to an active F1 seat since the championship began.
For the record, they are: Nico Rosberg, Heikki Kovalainen, Scott Speed, Alexandre Premat (F1 Practice Session), Nelson Piquet, Ernesto Viso (F1 Practice Session), Lewis Hamilton, Timo Glock, Lucas di Grassi, Vitaly Petrov, Kazuki Nakajima, Bruno Senna, Karun Chandhok, Sebastien Buemi, Romain Grosjean, Kamui Kobayashi and Nico Hulkenberg.
Of those 17, 11 remain in Formula 1 in 2010.
It would also be remiss to forget the tens of drivers who have received positions as test drivers at F1 teams, be it on a season-long contract or simply a one-off test, as a result of their results in GP2.
And all of them, without exception, have raced the GP2/05. For while the original car raced in the main series for three years, creating champions out of Rosberg, Hamilton and Glock, the car was then shipped off to Asia to compete in the GP2 Asia Series between 2008 and 2010. There simply isn’t a driver to have been promoted from GP2 to Formula 1 who has not competed in a field of GP2/05s.
The car, which was designed around a concept of ground effect rather than over reliance on body aerodynamics, was created not only with the specific intention of training the future drivers of F1, but to provide overtaking and an exciting show. Even today it remains fast and relevant. Despite racing with a detuned engine in the Asia series, its laptimes on its final weekend weren’t far off those being set by the new teams in F1… not bad for a six year old racer.
With its Main Series replacement, the GP2/08, due to be used in Asia for the 2010/2011 championship when its own replacement (GP2/11) is unveiled for the 2011 Main Series, Sunday was thus the last time we’ll see the 05 race. It has given us six seasons of racing which I and many colleagues will never forget. It has also stood the test of time, providing a safe racing environment throughout its life.
But, alas, after 94 races, six champions and some of the best racing I’ve ever seen, the GP2/05 will race no more. Whether they are to become museum pieces or sit in the teams’ factories is, as yet, unclear. But if anyone’s thinking of holding a track day with one, please let me know… I’d move heaven and earth to get into one, even if it was for just the one lap.
I hope that wherever they end up, they take pride of place. Because without them, today’s F1 grid wouldn’t contain half the talent it does.
The GP2/05 Champions
Nico Rosberg - 2005 Champion
Lewis Hamilton - 2006 Champion
Timo Glock - 2007 Champion
Romain Grosjean - 2008 Asia Champion
Kamui Kobayashi - 2008/2009 Asia Champion
Davide Valsecchi - 2009/2010 Asia Champion
The Buxton Blog 
Before they stick them in the bin, can they have F1’s team bosses spend a few hours looking at them first?
That way they might gain an appreciation of how single-seaters needs to be designed so they can race closely with each other.
If the entire F1 grid was replace with these cars for the next race, the only difference most sports fans would notice is how much better the racing had become.
And how much better the cars looked.
I adore these cars. If I had the money to, I would ensure I had one of these cars.
They look fantastic, sound pretty good and most importantly, have provided us with joyous racing over the past few seasons, even on many of the dull “Tilkedromes” featured on the Grand Prix circuit.
It’s been quite a shame that since 2009, GP2 has not been aired on terrestrial TV in the UK, as it’s far more exciting than F1. We were thankfully able to watch the ’07 and ’08 seasons as well as some of the earlier years.
Many have commented before about how the ground effect used in the GP2/05 has provided better racing, and it seems F1 cannot understand that.
I don’t follow the GP2 series as closely as I would like, but what is the philosophy behind the new spec cars? Is it still clean upper body aerodynamics or have they gone the way of F1, ironically it would be a better training exercise.
It is a shame about the UK broadcast, you’re right. And it would be easy for the beeb to do it on the red button – they wouldn’t even need to put their own commentary on it as the world feed goes out with one in the English language… I know this, because I’m the one who does it! Haha.
The GP2/08, ironically enough, had more flick ups and T wings, chimneys etc, just as F1 was banning them. It relied much more on aero. As such the racing isn’t as close with cars getting disturbed in dirty air at about 0.5-0.6 seconds gap.
One hopes the GP2/11 will rectify this and go back to ground effect, but I’ve been told it will be fairly similar in design to the HRT F1 car (both Dallara). It’ll have a high, narrow rear wing and low wide front wing a la F1.
That’s slightly disappointing – is that on safety grounds? Apparently when parts of the carbon fibre that create the ground effect are damaged the cars become unstable – presumably this is why F1 has ignored it so far.
And yes, I agree about the BBC, I did ask several of the F1 crew whether the GP2 series would be shown in 2009, I was really hoping so. Either they didn’t take it or Eurosport simply had a better offer, but I was under the impression the GP2 rights came with the F1 rights. I may be a touch uninformed here!
Probably there was also a slight concern that during a time of looking to a carbon-free future, having the BBC spend money on not only 1 motorsport but 2 might not have gone down well with certain types at Broadcasting House.
I feel a similar disappointment that the Le Mans 24h isn’t shown on terrestrial, it’s a superb event and it’s a shame no broadcaster has taken a gamble on one of it’s 365 days schedule.
Anyway – here’s hoping to a bright future for GP2, maybe F1 can learn the lessons it so dearly needs to.
Nathan, you are correct. GP2 is packaged in a rights bundle with the F1. That’s why so many fans were upset when all those stories cropped up that the beeb had sold those rights to Setanta. When that all went belly up the gig went to Eurosport even though the beeb have the rights to show it for free.
But from what I understand of the situation (and I may have been misinformed), there is an internal rule at the bbc that they won’t show any sport on the red button if you can’t see a percentage of it on their normal channels. So with Wimbledon you can chose what match you watch and in the Olympics chose your sport… but even though they show the F1 on the main channel, GP2 is considered a separate sport and unless they showed some of it on the main channel, they’re stopping themselves from showing it on the red button. Why not treat a Grand Prix weekend like the Olympics and allow people to watch different sports from the event on red button? I’m sure GP2, GP3, Porsche Supercup etc would all benefit and recieve good figures on red button.
That’s very interesting, thanks Will.
If what you say is true – I’ll have a snoop around! – then the ‘internal rule’ is silly.
However just the other day I’m sure there was the hockey world cup, none of which to my knowledge was shown on any of the normal channels. It was all shown on the red button/online.
So if there isn’t this rule about seeing a percentage of it on the normal channels, it begs the obvious question : why isn’t it being shown online? It would be a far better solution for both rights holders and the viewers to be able to watch it on a legal, high quality BBC online feed, instead of pushing the viewership into finding dodgy illegal streams which are the bane of the rights holders.
There must be something more to it – I’ll see if I can get any answers out of the BBC.
On your last point, that brings up something I’ve considered for a long time, when I tell friends I watch motorsport, they instantly think of Formula 1, and tell me what a boring sport it is to watch. When I try to explain there are other types of motorsport I’m met with incredulous looks. Part of the BBC’s remit surely is to present a variety of sporting genres and it seems short-sighted if they are going out of their way to not show the support series’.
Can you buy a job lot of them and set up your own series, a la defunct-and-in-administrators-hands A1GP?
Wouldn’t that be cool? I’d do that and get Giorgio Pantano, Adam Carroll, Luca Filippi, Hiroki Yoshimoto, Juan Cruz Alvarez and all the mega talented, really fun GP2 drivers back to thrash it out.
You could also set up a GP2 Prep School for F3 drivers (ala Anthony Hamilton)…
😉
That’s kind of what GP2 Asia was supposed to be.
A couple of things are puzzling me. Firstly, in a similar vein to the BBC query, why don’t Channel 10 in Australia (the F1 rights holder here) show GP2? They have a digital 24 hour sports channel that shows NASCAR, BTCC, DTM, etc – but not GP2.
Second, is there going to be another GP2 Asia series, given that Abu Dhabi in November is on the calendar for the main 2010 series?
Hi Andrew
Apparently, yes, there will be another GP2 Asia Series, although with the Main championship closing in Abu Dhabi, I think there’s scope for us to have seen the last of GP2 Asia.
Interesting – thanks Will. If it does happen, it might seem a bit odd having a two month break between Monza and Abu Dhabi, and then (presumably) a much shorter gap until the start of the new GP2 Asia Series… But I guess all will be revealed in good time.