Team iSport driver Davide Valsecchi won the Bahrain feature race today and clinched the GP2 Asia Series title.

With this third win, he snatched the series' title with three races to spare.

As soon as the lights went off at Sakhir, polesitter Jules Bianchi fell out of contention for victory following a very poor start. Javier Villa and Luca Filippi burst from second row to the first corner where the Meritus man took advantage on the Spaniard.

Though quicker than Filippi, Villa could not find a way passed the Italian and chose to observe an early pit stop on lap 8 - a winning strategy that put him ahead of Filippi and Valsecchi once all pit stops were done.

Towards the late stages of the race, Valsecchi's pace improved. Then running in third place, he rapidly closed the gap with Filippi. After several attempts to pass his countryman, leading to one small mistake and going wide at Turn 10 but he recovered, Valsecchi eventually overtook Filippi into Turn 1 on lap 28.

It took him only one lap to catch Villa. The Spaniard surrendered and handed him the lead one lap later also in the first corner. Valsecchi then pulled away easily and secured victory four laps later. Struggling with his tires, Villa could not resist Filippi's assaults for too long and had to fend off Ricci's attacks until the finish line.

Race 1, Bahrain

1 - Davide Valsecchi - iSport - 34 laps in 1h02'05"149
2 - Luca Filippi - Meritus + 2"792
3 - Javier Villa - Arden + 6"067.
4 - Giacomo Ricci - DPR + 6"238
5 - Charles Pic - Arden + 13"0
6 - Alvaro Parente - Coloni + 17"7
7 - Sergio Perez - Barwa Addax + 23"9
8 - Adrian Zaugg - Trident + 25"4
9 - Oliver Turvey - iSport + 29"2
10 - Jules Bianchi - ART + 33"2
etc.





Photo Credit : Drew Gibson/GP2 Media Service