Spa marks the 50th Grand Prix weekend for Marussia F1, which entered the sport as Virgin Racing at the start of 2010. After rain washed out second practice, Charles Pic ended up atop the timesheets, but the team admits that even this added publicity was no consolation prize after losing out on a possible three hours of dry development time.
Having taken several updates to Belgium following the month-long summer break, Marussia was keen to rack up as much dry running as possible with both Pic and Timo Glock.
“If we’re honest, what we would have preferred totally dry weather today because we’ve got quite a lot of upgrades in terms of aero and exhaust configurations, things like that,” Graeme Lowdon, Sporting Director and President of Marussia F1, told GPUpdate.net after second practice.
“A dry day today would have been perfect because we would have known where we were at with all of that work - we are quite hopeful that we’ve found some interesting things there. Then we would have liked one of those wet-dry, greasy tracks over the weekend, with which our drivers seem to do pretty well. P3, if it is dry, will certainly be really, really interesting to see where we are going with the upgrades.
“So we would have swapped today and tomorrow for all the tea in China. Today was just wet, with extra wet bits thrown in for good measure.”
Lowdon also ironed out confusion which surrounded the end of the session, as several drivers – including Pic – posted lap times despite starting their runs from the pit lane.
“I’ll tell you what happened,” he continued. “Because in P2 you are allowed to do a (practice) start from the grid, you basically take the flag, cruise back around, do your start and then you actually go over the finish again. So those were the only complete laps anyone did.”
In the team’s first two Belgian Grands Prix, it achieved pairs of 18th and 17th place finishes with Lucas di Grassi, Jérôme d’Ambrosio and the aforementioned Glock.
Series
Formula 1
Personalities
Graeme Lowdon
Charles Pic
Timo Glock
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Marussia
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| Pos. | Driver | Team | Time | Laps |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. |  C. Pic | Marussia | 02:49.354 | 4 |
| 2. | D. Ricciardo | Toro Rosso | 02:49.750 | 3 |
| 3. | F. Alonso | Ferrari | 02:50.497 | 3 |
| 4. | P. di Resta | Force India | 02:51.333 | 3 |
| 5. | P. Maldonado | Williams | 02:51.660 | 4 |
| 6. | T. Glock | Marussia | 02:52.076 | 4 |
| 7. | K. Kobayashi | Sauber | 02:53.232 | 4 |
| 8. | J. Vergne | Toro Rosso | 02:58.232 | 3 |
| 9. | N. Hulkenberg | Force India | 02:59.125 | 5 |
| 10. | S. Perez | Sauber | 03:12.901 | 4 |
| Full results | ||||
| Timo Glock | |||
|---|---|---|---|
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| More Timo Glock photos | |||
| Charles Pic | |||
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| More Charles Pic photos | |||
| Graeme Lowdon | |||
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| More Graeme Lowdon photos | |||
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