Fourth for di Grassi at Magny-Cours
Lucas di Grassi finished fourth in the Sunday GP2 sprint
at Magny-Cours, following his second place in the Saturday
race.
The Renault Driver Development squad member now lies third
in the championship, two points behind second placed Luca
Filippi. However, Lucas gained ground on series leader Timo
Glock, who failed to score this weekend, and he is now 10
points behind with seven race weekends still to come.
His second place on Saturday meant Lucas started the ART
car from seventh position. A shower shortly before the start
made conditions a little tricky, especially on the reconnaissance
laps to the grid, but everyone started on dry tyres.
Lucas lost a place on a busy first lap, but moved up when
Bruno Senna went off. He then passed Pastor Maldonado to get
into the points, before the retirement of leader Nicolas Lapierre
promoted him to fifth. He moved into fourth after passing
Vitaly Petrov. More rain in the closing laps made further
progess difficult.
‘My start was not great, and there was a bit of a mess
in the hairpin. I tried to get away from the mess and I lost
a lot of places, and then I recovered after and overtook three
or four cars. The others were too far away, and there was
no point to take a risk at the end. It's 11 points, it's been
a good weekend, and I can't complain. The main aim was to
get closer to Glock in the championship.'
Lucas enjoyed being back in the cockpit this weekend after
the long wait since the last GP2 race in Monaco.
‘It was a long break, and it's always good to get back!
It's going to be a very busy July with three races.'
The teams now head straight to Silverstone for the next round
of the series, where Lucas is hoping to make up for a disappointing
retirement last year after he had run strongly in the points.
‘I didn't finish but Silverstone was good for me last
year, it was my quickest race. I like the circuit and I'm
looking forward to it. ART won last year with Lewis Hamilton,
so the car should be good there.'
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