Monday, 18th February 2008

Qi-Meritus man in the wars at Sentul.

Luca Filippi was left to reflect on one that got away after a weekend that promised much ultimately delivered little at Sentul.

The Qi-Meritus Mahara man, buoyed by his recent unveiling as a Honda F1 test driver for the year ahead, proved to be the man to beat during the feature race as the GP2 Asia series headed to Indonesia as he came home ahead of Sebastien Buemi to give the team its maiden GP2 win.

However, it wasn't to last when it was found that the Italian had mistakenly used tyres belonging to team-mate Hiroki Yoshimoto, leading to his exclusion from the race and putting him to the back of the grid for the feature race.

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A number of Safety Car periods in the second race left little chance for overtaking, but Filippi had made some progress before being turned around by Diego Nunes on the tenth lap. Although he recovered to restart the race and bring his car to the finish, he was well outside the points to cap a tough weekend for the team.

"There was nothing I could do when we touched with Diego Nunes and he pushed me off," he said. "It took me three laps to restart the car. I have the impression that the race never started and that we were always behind the pace car.

"In my opinion, it was not wet enough to start behind a pace car. The rest of the time I could never push because of the conditions, the accidents and the interruptions. I am looking ahead to better times in Malaysia and glad to fly there as soon as possible."

Peter Thompson, president and team founder of the Qi-Meritus.Mahara squad admitted it was a weekend that just hadn't gone to plan.

"The team came in with a lot of hopes," he said. "Not a good weekend despite a podium and a strong race by Luca Filippi yesterday. Hopefully we can do better at our home race in Malaysia, for the third event of the season and we are looking to some more development and improvement."

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