22/05/2009
NEWS STORY
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Romain Grosjean has continued his winning ways with a storming drive to victory in the feature race today in Monaco, leading almost every lap to hand his team another one-two result ahead of teammate Vitaly Petrov and Andreas Zuber.
The Frenchman led the field away as the lights went out, with Petrov forcing his way in front of a fast starting Nico Hulkenberg as the rest of the field looked for a way through St Devote: Andreas Zuber, di Grassi and Jerome d'Ambrosio were the next men to follow in their wake as they
climbed the hill towards the Casino.
The famously tight circuit lived up to its reputation as the Belgian held a train of cars in his wake, leaving pit strategy to write a new story: Luca Filippi did the best job with his stop to become the man to beat out of the pits, leapfrogging up to effective sixth position while di Grassi repeated that form further up the field to put himself onto a potential podium.
Filippi was stuck once again though, as Davide Rigon left his stop to the closing laps of the race: when he was finally released he pushed too hard to catch Zuber and clipped the kerb at the final corner to immediately finish his race, while Alvaro Parente, Javier Villa and Edoardo Mortara tripped over each other at the hairpin to shake up the order behind.
But it was Grosjean who punched the air with delight as he crossed the finish line 6.6 seconds ahead of his teammate Petrov, while di Grassi held off Hulkenberg for the final podium position. Zuber finished a strong race in fifth position ahead of d'Ambrosio and Karun Chandhok, while Villa claimed eighth despite a very crooked front wing in the closing laps.
With Grosjean also taking a point for fastest lap, the Frenchman's lead in the championship continues to grow as his rivals look towards tomorrow's sprint race in an attempt to claw back some points.
An investigation into their actions was announced during the race, and at the conclusion of the event Roldan Rodriguez, Lucas di Grassi, Dani Clos, Nico Hülkenberg, Edoardo Mortara, Luca Filippi, Javier Villa and Kamui Kobayashi were all called to the stewards' office to discuss the incident.
After the resultant conversations each of the drivers were judged to have cut the apex of turn one and not used the track, putting them in breach of Article 30.3.1 of the sporting regulations: the normal penalty would be a drive through, but as it is to be applied at the end of the race 25 seconds has been added to each driver's elapsed time.
As a consequence several drivers have improved their results, most notably with Andreas Zuber promoted to a podium finish in third. Pastor Maldonado will now start tomorrow's sprint race from pole position.