Christian Vietoris has taken the decision to miss this weekend's GP2 round at Barcelona as a result of bad headaches he is suffering following a heavy accident at Istanbul two weeks ago.
The German did race in the DTM round at Zandvoort last weekend for Mercedes, but told Autosport that he thought it would do him well to miss Barcelona, with the hope of returning to action for the round at Monaco next weekend.
“It makes no sense for me to do it,” he said. “I have had bad headaches since the crash at Istanbul and it just isn’t a good idea for me to get back in a formula car right now.
“I did race at Zandvoort last weekend, which didn’t make it any worse, but it didn’t improve things either. I need to have five or six days rest and hopefully I will be okay to come back for Monaco. It’s a shame because I had a good weekend [at Barcelona] last year.”
Vietoris' replacement at Racing Engineering will be Portuguese racer Alvaro Parente. Parente won on his GP2 debut at Barcelona in 2008 with the Super Nova team, before racing during 2009 with Ocean Racing Technology. His most recent GP2 appearance came last year when he raced for Coloni at Spa and Monza.