Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsGP2

McLaren protégé Vandoorne secures GP2 title

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McLaren young driver Stoffel Vandoorne has secured the GP2 championship with four races remaining.

The Belgian driver clinched the title in Sunday's sprint race in Sochi as he came home fourth behind race-winner Richie Stanaway, Rio Haryanto and Raffaele Marciello. The result gave Vandoorne an unassailable 108-point lead over Alexander Rossi with two rounds and four races still to run this season.

Vandoorne's championship was set up by a dominant start to the season which saw him win the first four feature races. While he has only won once in 11 races since then, the 23-year-old has finished on the podium on eight further occasions and has only failed to score once.

Vandoorne is McLaren's test and development driver and was linked with Jenson Button's seat before the 2009 world champion signed to stay with the team for 2016.

While McLaren is keen to have both Vandoorne and Kevin Magnussen racing in F1 next season, only Lotus and Manor have vacancies which either driver could target. With Magnussen saying he would not be willing to wait for a second year in his role as reserve driver, Vandoorne is likely to be promoted to the reserve role at McLaren next year.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.