Hungaroring: P1 Motorsports race one report

VAN DER GARDE TAKES FOURTH WIN OF THE SEASON

Giedo Van der Garde has taken his fourth win of the 2008 season, driving a faultless race at the Hungaroring despite the chaos that unraveled behind him, in what turned out to be an incident-packed race. In doing so, the 23 year-old Dutchman retains the lead of the driver's championship, with P1 Motorsport also staying ahead in the team's title chase.

With a good start from third on the grid, Van der Garde moved across and passed pole-sitter Charles Pic (Tech 1 Racing). However, Epsilon's Alexandre Marsoin got an even better start and the P1 Motorsport car slotted in behind him, with Pic and team mate Julien Jousse in third and fourth respectively - dangerously close to Van der Garde's rear-wing. The Dutchman settled into a good pace and pulled out a small gap from the Tech 1 Racing duo, only for the safety car to be deployed causing the field to bunch up again. Dismissing pressure from Pic on the re-start and later from a charging Jousse, Van der Garde remained in second position - composed and ahead of his championship rivals.

With just over ten laps to go, Marsoin's quick getaway was deemed by stewards to have been a jump-start, and the Frenchman was forced to come into the pits for a drive-through penalty. Van der Garde inherited the lead that should have been his from the start, and drove an exceptional remainder of the race to take victory in Hungary.

An elated Van der Garde said: "We were a bit lucky with Marsoin because he jumped the start, but that was his mistake, so we took our fourth victory and that's more points for the championship. Tomorrow we start on row three but as you can see, anything can happen in the race. Jousse started in seventh this afternoon and finished second, so it's certainly possible to do that here. There will also be pitstops tomorrow so it will be interesting, and we definitely have a good race pace, so we'll see what happens."

Having made a good start off the line from 21st, team mate Mann sat comfortably in 16th position until an unfortunate spin left her back in 23rd. Determined as ever, she kept her focus and slowly started moving back up the order, eventually crossing the line to take a solid 15th place.

Commenting on her afternoon, Mann said: "We experienced pretty severe oversteer on the car and unfortunately the handling was affected and I lost control a couple of times. It's unusual for me to do that under race conditions so I'm frustrated with the situation, but I did my best and hopefully we can have a look at the data and see if we can make some improvements for tomorrow."

-credit: p1 motorsport