Motorsport: Kiwis' hopes for Monza podium

Kiwi driver Mitch Evans aims to repeat his Spa-Francorchamps success in Italy this weekend. Photo / GPS Series

Kiwis Mitch Evans and Richie Stanaway are hoping for a change of luck for the latest round of the GP2 championship in Monza this weekend.

It would be a brave betting man who'd bet against Stoffel Vandoorne getting on the podium again. The McLaren F1 reserve driver has had the wood on the entire field for most of the season and now leads the championship by a healthy 105 points from Alexander Rossi and Rio Haryanto.

The two New Zealanders haven't been having the best of times. Stanaway was a last-minute addition to the series with Status Grand Prix and despite a bright start with a podium in Monaco, has failed to score points in the last four rounds.

With four races to go he's down in 16th place and will need a big finish to the season to move inside the top 10.

Evans and his Russian Time team, on the other hand, have had a season that's oscillated between feast and famine. A podium in Spain was followed by a fallow period until Austria and then nothing until the last round in Spa-Francorchamps where he was back on the podium again. It's been a tough old season for the 21-year-old Aucklander but he's in good spirits heading into the weekend.

"It was good to be back [on podium] at Spa," said Evans from Italy.

"Hopefully we'll be able repeat our results again this weekend. We've had a tough weekend with a number of things and let's hope we can have a good finish to the weekend and get back on track and have a solid run."

Evans finished fourth in the title race last year but has struggled with car set-up this year. The good news for the rest of the championship is that the Kiwi has his old engineer from last year back on board, and if Spa-Francorchamps was anything to go by, he's on for a good weekend.

"Getting my old engineer back has made a really big difference. After Silverstone my old engineer was let go and I had another for Budapest. I now have Gavin [Jones] back with me and that's really good. You can see we have the pace back the same as last year.

"The car feels great and it's like being back home again. We should go all right here as we had a podium last year," said Evans.

With speed and reliability back on the table, Evans should be back at the pointy end of the field again. The only slide-ball may just be the Drag Reduction System (DRS) introduced on to the rear win of the GP2 cars this year. It'll have an impact on the racing as Monza is predominantly a series of straights with the odd corner.

"The track has a lot of fast sections but I feel we can be competitive again and it's going to be close again here. Rain is forecast for qualifying and race one so that's going to have a big impact on the weekend.

"We can't control that so we'll just see how it is and roll with it," he said.

Realistically, Evans is not going to overhaul the two leaders, but the five drivers in front of him are fair game if he ends the season with regular podium finishes.

Everything is set for another classic GP2 race weekend with Pirelli selecting hard and medium tyres to cope with the Italian track.

GP2 standings

Points after eight rounds
1. Stoffel Vandoorne 233
2. Alexander Rossi 128
3. Rio Haryanto 109
4. Sergey Sirotkin 109
5. Alex Lynn 86
6. Pierre Gasly 61
7. Raffaele Marciello 58
8. Mitch Evans 57