Mitch Evans takes maiden GP2 win

Two Toyota Racing Series titles, youngest ever Grand Prix winner, the GP3 title in 2012 and now Aucklander Mitch Evans has taken his maiden win in GP2 at Silverstone.
Evans, racing for the Russian Time team, took his win in Saturday's feature race. His team-mate Artem Markelov was 18th.
“The last 18 months have been really tricky for us, for me and my family, and it’s a huge relief for everything to come together finally for my first win in GP2. It’s been far too long, but I’m really, really happy to finally get the monkey of my back, and hopefully it’s not the last one of the season!”
Kiwi Evans, who is Mark Webber's protege, overcame an early clutch problem and undercut long-time leader Jolyon Palmer of DAMS to take the lead during the mandatory pitstop cycle.
“I think there was a potential clutch problem on the car after race 2 in Austria with a bit of a dip on the bite point, and I thought it was going to stall to be honest. Fortunately with Jolyon on the right being on the damp side of the track, and with everyone else making bad starts apart from Marciello, I got away with it and managed to get Jolyon into turn 3. The car wasn’t really working nice for the first few laps, and then after Jolyon got me I got into a good rhythm and was able to stay with the guys and have a crack when it came to the pitstop. Fortunately the guys gave me a good car and I was able to stay with Jolyon and make it work, and had a great pitstop from the guys, which has been a bit of an achilles heel for us,” he said.
They had duelled early in the race too, with Evans getting ahead of Palmer on the opening lap. The British driver repassed Evans on lap four and the pair traded fastest laps throughout.
A massive push from Evans before he pitted on the following lap meant he rejoined ahead. He said the quick ‘in-lap’ gave him an advantage going into the pit stop cycle.
“Looking back, it was probably decisive. I was really surprised coming out of the pits and they told me Jolyon was just coming out of turn one. It’s hard to know if the undercut or the overcut is going to work, so I just made the most of what I had, and fortunately I still had some life left in the tyres and had a good in lap. But the pitstop really helped us: I think we had the fastest pitstop so that really helped, and after that it was really close between us. The option came in quicker that I thought, which really helped me, and after Copse I just put my head down and the car was better than what it was at the start of the race, and that’s to the credit of the guys.”
Exiting the pit stop Evans then had to hold off Palmer with some stern defensive driving on cold tyres.
Palmer lunged him around the outside of both Brooklands and Luffield, but he ran out of track at the latter and went wide over the Astroturf and was not able to challenge Evans through the closing laps.
The New Zealander went on to win by 4.9s, and said afterward: "It’s huge! We’ve been playing a lot of catch up since the start of the season because the iSport guys have come back into the championship with RUSSIAN TIME, and being a year out has sort of hurt us a bit, but we’re getting stronger and they’re starting to realise more and more what I need from the car, and I think that really showed this weekend. We made some good strides in Austria which didn’t really show in the races, but I think we can be consistently on the podium and can hopefully win some more races in the future. We've been waiting too long for this, it feels nice!"
Evans set fastest race lap and is now fourth in the championship.