In the run-up to the start of pre-season testing Motorsport Week brings you left-field reflections and stories of teams, drivers and reserves that will be part of the Formula 1 paddock in 2019.
In the 14-year history of the GP2 Series and Formula 2 – ie, since the formation of a rejuvenated and refined Formula 1 feeder series – only seven drivers have pulled off ‘the double’.
That is the achievement of winning both the Feature Race and the Sprint Race – an accomplishment made challenging through the victor of Saturday’s encounter starting Sunday’s shorter affair, without a pit stop strategy to intervene, from eighth on the grid.
Three of them came in the same season – Lewis Hamilton, Nelson Piquet and Giorgio Pantano in 2006 – while Nico Rosberg (2005), Nico Hulkenberg (2009) and Davide Valsecchi (2012) all achieved the feat. But in the last six years it has been carried out just once – by full-time 2019 F1 debutant Antonio Giovinazzi.
Giovinazzi’s feat was all the more remarkable for the crazy circumstances in which the wins came about. Giovinazzi had yet to take a GP2 point when the series rolled into new-for-2016 venue Baku, but stormed to pole, only to fall back at the start to fifth.
But he recovered to take a stunning win in a thrilling encounter – though that was ultimately overshadowed by what happened in the Sprint Race.
Giovinazzi plummeted from eighth to last on the opening lap but worked his way forward amid a litany of incidents, the most famous being the bunched restart mess caused by Nobuharu Matsushita.
As much of the field went several cars wide at varying speeds Giovinazzi emerged in fourth and soon moved into second, behind Prema team-mate Pierre Gasly, when leader Matsushita was taken off by Raffaele Marciello.
Gasly, who had started from 18th, tried to keep Giovinazzi at bay but as they began the final lap the Italian swept through into the lead, which he preserved for the remaining five kilometres to chalk up an extraordinary double win that catapulted him 15 places in the standings and marked him out as a title contender.
Giovinazzi and Gasly would go on to scrap for the crown and ultimately it was the Red Bull driver who triumphed at the Abu Dhabi finale.
Charles Leclerc came close to a repeat at Baku 12 months later, only for a time penalty to demote him from first to second in the Sprint Race, while last year George Russell took a first and a second in Austria – but neither emulated the win double achieved by Giovinazzi.
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