Lucas di Grassi

Lucas di Grassi

Di Grassi at the 2010 Malaysian Grand Prix
Born	(1984-08-11) 11 August 1984 São Paulo, Brazil
Formula One World Championship career
Nationality	Brazilian
Active years	2010
Teams	Virgin
Races	19 (18 starts)
Championships	0
Wins	0
Podiums	0
Career points	0
Pole positions	0
Fastest laps	0
First race	2010 Bahrain Grand Prix
Last race	2010 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix
2010 position	24th (0 points)

Lucas Tucci di Grassi (born 11 August 1984 in São Paulo) is a Brazilian racing driver who drove for Virgin Racing in the 2010 Formula One season. He is currently Pirelli's official test driver for the 2011 Formula One season and the 2012 Formula One season.

Career

Early career

Di Grassi's career in karting peaked in 2000, with a 5th place in the Formula A World Championship. Di Grassi began his formula racing career in Brazilian Formula Renault in 2002, finishing as runner-up to champion Sérgio Jimenez.

Formula Three (2003–06)

In 2003 Di Grassi stepped up to Formula Three, driving a Dallara F301 Mugen-Honda for Avallone Motorsport in Formula Three Sudamericana. He finished as the championship runner-up behind Danilo Dirani, with one win and eleven other podium finishes. This came despite missing the last six races after suffering a major crash at the Curitiba round.

He also travelled to Europe to make four race starts in the F3 Euroseries with Prema Powerteam, achieving a best finish of fourth place. The following year, he made a permanent move to Europe and took a drive with Hitech Racing in the British F3 Championship. His season peaked with two wins, and he was classified in eighth place overall. Another of that year's highlights was a podium finish on his début at the Macau Grand Prix with Hitech.

In 2005, Di Grassi took another step up in a full-time return to the F3 Euroseries with Manor Motorsport. Against the dominant ASM pairing of Lewis Hamilton and Adrian Sutil he could only manage one win but ended the year third in the championship.

At the end of the season, Di Grassi returned to Macau, this time with Manor, and won the event from third on the grid, although runaway F3 Euroseries champion Hamilton missed the race.

GP2 Series (2006–09)

Di Grassi driving for Campos Grand Prix at the Silverstone round of the 2008 GP2 Series season

2006 brought Di Grassi to the next stage in his career: promotion to the GP2 Grand Prix support series with Team Durango. It was a modest debut season, however, with only 8 points and 17th place in the championship standings.

For 2007 he joined reigning champions ART Grand Prix. He scored points consistently throughout the season, failing to score only once in the first 13 races. Despite not winning a race in that time, it put him in contention for the championship along with iSport's Timo Glock.

He scored his first win of the year in the 14th round of the championship at Istanbul, and took the lead of the championship, but Glock moved back ahead of him when he won the sprint race at the same event, and went on to win the title.

Di Grassi worked on testing the new-model GP2 car (to be used between 2008 and 2010), while testing for Renault F1. However, he resumed his GP2 career in 2008 by securing a drive at Campos Racing from round 4 onwards, replacing Ben Hanley. With three second places and one fourth place finish, he was the highest-scoring driver over the first two race meetings in which he took part. Two wins followed and he briefly looked set for a surprising championship challenge, before a final lap collision with Giorgio Pantano (who was disqualified for the incident) at Spa effectively ended his hopes. He finished an eventual third, ten points behind Pantano despite six fewer races.

He returned to the series for 2009 with Racing Engineering, and again finished third, finishing with the same number of points as he did in 2008.

Formula One

Having previously been a test driver for Renault in 2005, di Grassi tested for the Honda Racing F1 Team at the end of 2008, alongside fellow Brazilian and GP2 rival Bruno Senna. Honda race driver Jenson Button tested a Honda at Circuit de Catalunya.

Renault (2008–2009)

Di Grassi was then sent a contract by Renault to join them as a test driver, becoming the third GP2 runner-up to join Renault as a test driver after fellow Brazilian Nelson Piquet, Jr. and Heikki Kovalainen. However, di Grassi was not retained by the team for 2010.

Virgin (2010)

Di Grassi took his and the Virgin team's first race finish at the 2010 Malaysian Grand Prix.

Di Grassi joined Timo Glock at new team Virgin Racing for 2010. The team, originally called Manor, was rebranded when Virgin Group owner Richard Branson purchased a 20% stake. Di Grassi finished in 24th position in the championship, with a best race finish of 14th at the 2010 Malaysian Grand Prix.

In Japan, he crashed on the way to the grid before the race had started. In December, di Grassi won the Desafio Internacional das Estrelas, a karting event organised by Felipe Massa.

On 21 December 2010, di Grassi was left without a drive, after Virgin announced Jérôme d'Ambrosio to partner Glock for the 2011 season.

Testing

Pirelli (2011–)

On 6 July 2011, di Grassi was appointed Pirelli's official tester for their development of Formula One tyres for the 2011 season, and will drive the Italian company's Toyota TF109 test car in five test sessions in order to develop the next generation of tyres, as well as attending several race weekends where he will collect information about tyre performance and attend technical briefings. He will remain with Pirelli for the 2012 Formula One season alongside Jaime Alguersuari to help develop tyres for 2013 and beyond using a Renault R30 chassis and it will be upgraded to the 2012 requirements for Alguersuari and Di Grassi to run the car across four development tests during the course of the season at Jerez, Spa, Monza and Barcelona to help Pirelli improve its selection of tyres.

Formula E (2012–)

In 2012 Di Grassi was announced as the official test driver for the upcoming environmentally friendly Formula E series run by the FIA. He first tested the prototype Formula E car at Circuit de L'Eure near Paris in August.

Racing record

Career summary

Season	Series	Team	Races	Wins	Poles	F/Laps	Podiums	Points	Position
2002	Formula Renault 2.0 Brazil	G Force Motorsport	10	2	1	0	6	137	2nd
2003	Formula Three Sudamericana	Avallone Motorsport	12	1	3	0	11	164	2nd
	Formula 3 Euroseries	Prema Powerteam	4	0	0	0	0	5	21st
2004	British Formula 3	Hitech Racing	24	2	3	0	6	130	8th
	Bahrain Super Prix		1	0	0	0	0	N/A	19th
	Macau Grand Prix		1	0	0	0	1	N/A	3rd
	Masters of Formula 3		1	0	0	0	0	N/A	5th
2005	Formula 3 Euroseries	Manor Motorsport	19	1	2	1	6	68	3rd
	Macau Grand Prix		1	1	0	0	1	N/A	1st
	Masters of Formula 3		1	0	0	0	1	N/A	3rd
	Formula One	Mild Seven Renault F1 Team	Test driver
2006	GP2 Series	Durango	20	0	0	0	2	8	17th
2007	GP2 Series	ART Grand Prix	21	1	0	0	7	77	2nd
2008	GP2 Series	Barwa International Campos Team	14	3	0	2	6	63	3rd
	Formula One	ING Renault F1 Team	Test driver
2009	GP2 Series	Racing Engineering	20	1	1	2	8	63	3rd
	Formula One	ING Renault F1 Team	Test driver
2010	Formula One	Virgin Racing	19	0	0	0	0	0	24th

Complete Formula Three Euroseries results

(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position) (Races in italics indicate fastest lap)

Year	Entrant	Chassis	Engine	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	DC	Points
2003	Prema Powerteam	Dallara F303/022	Spiess-Opel	HOC 1	HOC 2	ADR 1 14	ADR 2 18	PAU 1 9	PAU 2 4	NOR 1	NOR 2	LMS 1	LMS 2	NÜR 1	NÜR 2	A1R 1	A1R 2	ZAN 1	ZAN 2	HOC 3	HOC 4	MAG 1	MAG 2	21st	5
2005	Manor Motorsport	Dallara F305/025	Mercedes	HOC 1 Ret	HOC 2 DNS	PAU 1 5	PAU 2 7	SPA 1 DSQ	SPA 2 3	MON 1 7	MON 2 5	OSC 1 1	OSC 2 2	NOR 1 5	NOR 2 6	NÜR 1 2	NÜR 2 Ret	ZAN 1 Ret	ZAN 2 Ret	LAU 1 8	LAU 2 3	HOC 3 2	HOC 4 Ret	3rd	68

Complete GP2 Series results

(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position) (Races in italics indicate fastest lap)

Year	Entrant	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	DC	Points
2006	Durango	VAL FEA 17	VAL SPR 16	SMR FEA Ret	SMR SPR Ret	GER FEA 18	GER SPR 13	ESP FEA 12	ESP SPR 9	MON FEA 11	GBR FEA Ret	GBR SPR EX	FRA FEA 7	FRA SPR 6	GER FEA Ret	GER SPR Ret	HUN FEA 13	HUN SPR Ret	TUR FEA 5	TUR SPR 9	ITA FEA 10	ITA SPR 14	17th	8
2007	ART Grand Prix	BHR FEA 5	BHR SPR Ret	ESP FEA 3	ESP SPR 3	MON FEA 5	FRA FEA 2	FRA SPR 4	GBR FEA 4	GBR SPR 4	EUR FEA 2	EUR SPR 6	HUN FEA 4	HUN SPR 4	TUR FEA 1	TUR SPR 11	ITA FEA 13	ITA SPR 4	BEL FEA 3	BEL SPR 3	VAL FEA Ret	VAL SPR 13	2nd	77
2008	Campos Racing GP2	ESP FEA	ESP SPR	TUR FEA	TUR SPR	MON FEA	MON SPR	FRA FEA 2	FRA SPR 4	GBR FEA 2	GBR SPR 2	GER FEA 5	GER SPR Ret	HUN FEA 1	HUN SPR 10	EUR FEA 4	EUR SPR 1	BEL FEA 20	BEL SPR 5	ITA FEA 1	ITA SPR 11		3rd	63
2009	Racing Engineering	ESP FEA Ret	ESP SPR 10	MON FEA 4	MON SPR 4	TUR FEA 8	TUR SPR 1	GBR FEA 2	GBR SPR 19	GER FEA 7	GER SPR Ret	HUN FEA 2	HUN SPR 3	VAL FEA 19	VAL SPR Ret	BEL FEA 3	BEL SPR Ret	ITA FEA 3	ITA SPR 2	POR FEA 3	POR SPR 15		3rd	63

Complete Formula One results

(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position) (Races in italics indicate fastest lap)

Year	Entrant	Chassis	Engine	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	WDC	Points
2010	Virgin Racing	Virgin VR-01	Cosworth CA2010 2.4 V8	BHR Ret	AUS Ret	MAL 14	CHN Ret	ESP 19	MON Ret	TUR 19	CAN 19	EUR 17	GBR Ret	GER Ret	HUN 18	BEL 17	ITA 20	SIN 15	JPN DNS	KOR Ret	BRA NC	ABU 18	24th	0

Touring Car racing

V8 Supercar results

Year	Team	Car	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	25	26	27	28	29	30	31	Final Pos	Points
2012	Tekno Autosports	Holden VE Commodore	ADE R1	ADE R2	SYM R3	SYM R4	HAM R5	HAM R6	PER R7	PER R8	PER R9	PHI R10	PHI R11	HDV R12	HDV R13	TOW R14	TOW R15	QLD R16	QLD R17	SMP R18	SMP R19	SAN Q	SAN R20	BAT R21	SUR R22 11	SUR R23 DNS	YMC R24	YMC R25	YMC R26	WIN R27	WIN R28	SYD R29	SYD R30	NC	0 †

† Not Eligible for points

Complete FIA World Endurance Championship results

Year	Entrant	Class	Chassis	Engine	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	Rank	Points
2012	Audi Sport Team Joest	LMP1	Audi R18 e-tron quattro	Audi TDI 3.7L Turbo V6 (Hybrid Diesel)	SEB	SPA	LMN	SIL	SAO 3	BHR	FUJ	SHA	22nd	15

External links

• Lucas di Grassi official website
• @lucasdigrassi on Twitter
• Lucas Di Grassi career statistics at Driver Database

Sporting positions
Preceded by Alexandre Prémat	Macau Grand Prix Winner 2005	Succeeded by Mike Conway
Preceded by Michael Schumacher	Desafio Internacional das Estrelas Winner 2010	Succeeded by Jaime Alguersuari