Photo: WTCC Media

Grégoire Demoustier to suffer grid penalty in Marrakech

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Grégoire Demoustier and Craft-Bamboo Racing had a productive test in Portimao, Portugal, right after the Argentinian round of the FIA World Touring Car Championship. With a total of some 1,000 km the Frenchman had time to get to grips with the new-for him Chevrolet Cruze RML ahead of Marrakech, the second event of the 2015 season.

Despite some happy faces in the team after the intense test, the Frenchman pays the price of an over rev while downshifting, which damaged his engine and forced the team to change it ahead of the African event.

This leaves Demoustier with a grid penalty for Race 1. However, the Frenchman is not the only driver suffering from a grip drop, as fellow countrymen Yvan Muller and Campos Racing’s John Filippi will be pushed five places back on the grid.

“It is a real shame about my grid penalty after the start we had in Argentina,” said Demoustier, who scored his first WTCC point in South America. “We completed four days of successful testing in Portimao, where I gained lots of experience in the car and consistently improved my lap times. The engineers did a great job of extracting more performance from the car and it is unfortunate that I won’t be able to showcase this in Morocco but I will be doing my absolute best to challenge the rest of the field.”

Richard Coleman, CEO of Craft-Bamboo Racing, is impressed with his driver’s performance in Portimao and tries to see the bright side of the penalty, as the team will try to save tyres for the following round in Hungary on May, 3rd:

“The entire team was really impressed with Gregoire’s pace and performance during the extensive Portimao test period and we have made a huge amount of progress with the car since the first race. We will be looking at a safe approach with the tyres this weekend which will hopefully benefit us in later races, but it is important that we wait until Budapest to see where the improvements made in testing have got us.”

Demoustier will also be competing in the Yokohama Trophy, in which he sits fourth with nine points to his name.