09/05/2009
NEWS STORY
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Romain Grosjean got his season off to the perfect start with an emphatic victory in today's feature race in Barcelona, claiming a 1-2 for his Barwa Campos team as Vitaly Petrov crossed the finish line ahead of Jérôme d'Ambrosio.
The Frenchman's race was set up at the start when he out-dragged fellow front row starter Lucas di Grassi to the first corner, with Petrov and d'Ambrosio also slipping inside the Brazilian as they set off after Grosjean. The teammates swapped fastest laps over the first half of the race, and while the Belgian could at least keep them in sight, di Grassi was struggling as he was soon under pressure from a hard charging Luca Filippi.
The Italian was finally through on lap 13, with di Grassi pulling straight in afterwards for his mandatory pitstop, while up front Grosjean came in 3 laps later re-emerging in P8 just behind Nico Hülkenberg, who had dropped to 18th after a poor stop but impressed everyone with a fine recovery drive. Two laps later the other front runners dived in and order was restored, with the Frenchman reclaiming his lead from his teammate.
Di Grassi looked to have done enough after his stop to get his race back on track, but Pastor Maldonado had other ideas: the Venezuelan was slicing through the train formed behind the slower Brazilian and was soon by, but with the pair both running wide into different corners the pack behind were caught out: Alvaro Parente got loose and ran over the top of di Grassi's car, while Diego Nunes had nowhere to go but into a collision.
The inevitable safety car compacted the grid with a few laps remaining, but Grosjean had enough left to hold on for victory just ahead of Petrov and d'Ambrosio, with Filippi pushing hard behind for fourth place ahead of Maldonado, Edoardo Mortara, Giedo van der Garde and Kamui Kobayashi who will start from pole position on tomorrow's reversed grid.