Lucas di Grassi believes fans can look forward to ‘thrilling’ racing this season after testing showed that the teams are closer together in terms of pace.
The second and final test finished this week with only a second separating the top thirteen cars, and di Grassi believes this means there is a thrilling season ahead.
“Even at this point, it’s obvious that the fans can look forward to a thrilling season because all teams and drivers have moved together even closer than they were before,” he said.
And while the Brazilian didn’t find himself at the top of the timesheets at any point during testing, he was still happy with the way testing went, saying that the team weren’t concentrating on lap times.
“We’re well set for the first race in Hong Kong. During the entire testing stage the team worked with concentration and on a top-class level.
“The track at Donington is not comparable with the season’s city street circuits, so the times aren’t very conclusive and were not the main thing we focused on.”
Team Principal of Abt Schaeffler Audi, Hans-Jurgen Abt, echoed his comments, saying that the team were concentrating more on learning about new software on the car than they were on setting the fastest lap time.
“We’re very happy with the tests,” said Abt. “Our cars were running without any issues every day, our drivers gave us valuable feedback and we managed to tick off every item on our extensive schedule.”
“We didn’t look at lap times here at Donington, but concentrated on intensively familiarising ourselves with the innovations on the car including the software.”
Audi recently announced that they would be increasing their financial and technical support to the team, ahead of a ‘fully fledged factory commitment’ for the 2017/18 season, which di Grassi believes will help them in their fight to stay at the front.
