Timo Glock has extended his championship lead over Lucas di Grassi with a brilliant drive yesterday in Monza, to take victory from Luca Filippi and Bruno Senna.
Race Report:
Ricardo Risatti led the field into the first corner from pole position, with Bruno, Sebastien Buemi, Giorgio, Timo, Vitaly Petrov and Luca tucked up behind him. Ricardo however was clearly slowing the field behind him, and as he held on for all his might in the opening laps, the faster cars behind scrambled for position.
Giorgio took Sebastien on the second lap, passing Bruno one lap later. He was now on Ricardo’s tail, but the pair touched at the first chicane and Giorgio spun back to seventh and out of the points. This raised Timo into third as the iSport driver had passed both Sebastien and Luca by running straight on at the second chicane in a moment where three cars into one simply would not go. On lap six Luca got past Sebastien, with Lucas di Grassi following him through after an amazing first few laps had seen him rise up the field from 13th on the grid. On the same lap, Timo took Bruno and set off after Ricardo and one lap later Luca passed Bruno for third.
Lap eight saw Timo take the lead from Ricardo at the first corner, with Luca following him through to take second. By lap 10 the order saw Timo leading Luca, Bruno, Lucas and Sebastien, with Giorgio right on the Swiss driver’s rear wing. At the front, Luca was doing all he could to eat into Timo’s slender one second lead, but the pair were so evenly matched that they held an almost identical gap for the remaining laps. Giorgio meanwhile was doing all he could to retake positions, but on lap 17 he ran into the back of Sebastien at the second chicane. With his front wing skewed to an angle he was shown the black and orange flag, calling him in to pit to take repairs. He ignored it however, and carried on.
By now Ricardo had retired from the race and Andi Zuber was all over Giorgio. Andi got past him on the final lap for fifth, leaving the final order Timo, Luca, Bruno, Lucas, Andi and Giorgio, with Adam Carroll taking the point for fastest lap After the race however, the stewards looked into both Timo’s passing of Luca and Sebastien at the second chicane, and Giorgio’s failure to comply with the flag. They decided that no action should be taken in Timo’s case, but Giorgio was disqualified, meaning that Karun Chandhok was promoted to sixth position and the final point. Kohei Hirate was also docked 12 seconds, and Markus Niemela a minute from the final results for their parts in race incidents.
What about the championship?
Timo leads the championship on 78 points, 11 ahead of Lucas on 67. Luca Filippi holds onto third spot with 50 points, one ahead of Giorgio on 49. In the team’s championship, iSport maintain their lead on 108 points, 31 ahead of ART Grand Prix with Super Nova third on 63.
1. Timo Glock: iSport International. 32:32.346 We knew it would be quite difficult to be on the podium but we fight everytime until the last moment, and thats the reason why we are sometimes on the podium where some guys would not expect us to be and that’s a positive thing about the whole team. 2. Luca Filippi: Super Nova International. +1.814 We were quick at every single weekend, we were just unlucky. I don’t luck to talk about bad luck because everybody can have some so I just reset my mind. I came here with one goal and everything was getting better and better.
3. Bruno Senna: Arden International. +8.470 Its been a great weekend. In qualifying I really though we were going to have another one of those weekends where you just get frustrated, but really I can’t be more happy than this. With all the conditions that we faced it was a good fight for the positions that we achieved and I am pretty happy
