NEWS


Charouz in the points
2010-07-05


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P1 Motorsport scored more points to add to their championship tally this weekend in Hungary, after Jan Charouz took seventh place and four valuable points in the first race from the Budapest circuit. His team mate Walter Grubmuller Jr finished just outside the points in 12th position.

The Hungaroring event got underway well for the British team, after Grubmüller was quickest overall in Friday’s practice session. Qualifying also saw both drivers perform well, with the Austrian driver lining up in seventh place and team mate Charouz just behind him in ninth.

The P1 duo made good starts and by the end of the first lap, Grubmüller and Charouz were running sixth and eighth respectively. However the safety car was deployed after Sergio Canamasas (Interwetten) crashed on lap four, and on the re-start, Grubmüller lost a number of places, dropping him back to 11th place.

Meanwhile team mate Charouz had managed to manoeuvre his P1 car through the field and was running in an impressive seventh position. When Anton Nebylitskiy (KMP Racing) was handed a drive-through penalty, the P1 driver took sixth position, however an end-of-race battle with Spain’s Albert Costa (Epsilon Euskadi) cost him a place and he was finally classified in a credit seventh position.

Speaking about the race, Charouz said: “I’m happy with today. I was a bit unlucky in qualifying because I did just one lap on the first new set of tyres before the session was red flagged. It was good on the second set and I secured fifth row. The start went well and I gained one place and then another after the restart. It was a difficult race because the tyres were so quickly destroyed in the heat, which also took it’s toll also on drivers. I’m happy to get points and I hope it will be a similar outcome tomorrow.”

Grubmüller was forced to settle for 12th position, despite such a strong showing in practice and qualifying. The young Austrian driver said: “I had a reasonable start and I was running sixth for quite a long time. Then there was a safety car period and Nebylitskiy overtook me but he went outside the track and was penalized afterwards. Unfortunately I lost my rhythm and fell down to 11th. I lost another place later after Greg Mansell’s crash because I had to avoid his car, and finally finished in 12th. It’s a shame because sixth place and important points were close. Now I just have to remain focused.”