ART: Filippi or Grosjean?

[Sev]

To be honest, despite his lunacy, I think it was a good weekend for Grosjean. During that race, when he wanted, he was a good 1 second a lap faster than Kobayashi. All weekend he's been head and shoulders faster than everyone else.

What GP2 needs is for him to make more stupid mistakes like today, otherwise the championship might be a race for second. As opposed to Filippi, who was simply rubbish.

[GroupOfOne]

Don't forget Filippi had tech problems in qualifying (gearbox I think, without checking) which left him near the back, and once you're down there in GP2 there's always potential for tangling with people. He did seem to have some good pace near the end and was catching up and overtaking people.

Second race he had an engine failure, which I don't think you can call him rubbish for having. Bearing in mind he was ahead of Valsecchi and behind Maldonado when it went.

[Sev]

Well, except for the fact that in race 1 he and Grosjean started relatively near to each other (11th to 14th), yet Grosjean made over twice as many places (including passing people Filippi was stuck against). Now, true Grosjean is not exactly an average driver, but he is the only one Filippi has to compare himself to.

[GroupOfOne]

Yeah true Grosjean did start close to Filippi. I just remember him looking very racey until contact (can't remember who with, think it was at that dreadful chicane) dropped him back in race one and then race two his engine went when he probably would have scored points, and finished ahead of his team mate

I know what you mean about not being entirely convinced by Filippi as a top draw (e.g. Hamilton, Rosberg, Glock) GP2 driver, as he does sometimes go missing. Does have an almost Zuber like streak of bad luck at times too. But then I suppose you make your own luck.

08 will be a make or break season for him with regards any chance to step up to F1 I think, then again he may become Pantano MkII and stick around winning the odd couple of GP2 races a season for various teams in years to come.

[chunterer]

Funnily enough, i'm not sure he's Giorgio's level as a driver.

[Gaz]

Grosjean is the stand out driver by a country mile in that field this year. He looks the part - he's racey, he's quick and he's got a winning mentality. His move today was a bit daft but I'm sure he'll learn from that and come back next time out with something to prove. Grosjean reminds me very much of Lewis in GP2 - his attitude to racing I like, he never gives up and he's prepared to have a go when many others would just sit there and blame the dirty air.

[Sev]

Man, on the basis of this discussion, that leaves us with only one question: Who will he kick out of the F1 grid next year?

[chunterer]

Jackman, made some valid points about Filippi's problems in the main thread. Having viewed the action again late last night I can see what he's saying.

I was erring a bit too much on the sweeping generalisation side which isn't good!

However let's see how the two match up against each other in Istanbul - could be the key pointers of the weekend. I.E. Will Grosjean really stamp his authority on the field, or will Filippi put all of his troubles behind him from Catalunya and make his title challenge stick?

Could be good!

[Sev]

Originally Posted by Jackman

So clearly Filippi had rubbish luck, but was he rubbish himself? I'm less convinced.

At the end of the day, the championship table will say.

And yes, I agree that Filippi is far more talented than his past weekend showed. I just don't think he's quite talented 'enough'.

[OJB]

I wonder if Filippi is feeling the pressure. He was my big title fave before the start of the season and he probably thought the same thing when he signed for ART.

But Grosjean's mix of speed and consistency (which I thought he'd take longer to show in all honesty) means all the attention is definitely on him. After his crappy Asia campaign, Filippi doesn't look so confident. Hopefully his weekend was mainly down to various issues, but he's got to catch up soon.

[Jackman]

I've yet to come to a conclusion about Grosjean: certainly he has speed at circuits where he has already done a lot of miles, but so far he's looked ordinary when he's never been to a track before. Istanbul should be interesting in that respect.

[chunterer]

Some posts taken from the main GP2 thread as it looks like a discussion worth having......

[Sev]

Originally Posted by chunterer

Some posts taken from the main GP2 thread as it looks like a discussion worth having......

Poll worth having possibly

Although that said, on my brief analysis of people's predictions for Barcelona, Grosjean significantly more popular.

But on the Filippi question; being beaten by Yoshimoto in GP2 Asia, then having a really bad weekend at Barcelona is definitely going to hurt his confidence. But surely he's got to be able to at least match his performances last year with Supernova? (Although I suspect Supernova, iSport, Piquet, Arden and ART are all extremely close in terms of speed. Difference being less than a tenth per lap say)

[kipper]

In my opinion Grosjean is probably the quicker driver of the two, although how he performs at the likes of Istanbul and Valencia will be interesting to see. With regards to Filippi, I would have previously said that he would have been the better driver, however, I has expected him to have a good sized margin over Yoshimoto in GP2 Asia, which failed to be the case.

[META4]

I believe when we are talking about Filippi case, you cannot really mention The GP2 Asia , as his team (Meritus Racing) was unexperienced ... to not say anything else ...

Do not forget he won race 1 in Sentul , then has been disqualified due to team mistake

Filippi is definitly a good driver, i expect him to be a front runner in Istanbul and also be a Title contender

[Jackman]

I love Yoshi more than most, but even I couldn't say that he beat Filippi in Asia: the Italian won one race (later disqualified because the team put Yoshi's tyres on his car), was nerfed out of a few more races, and was easily quicker than Yoshi in qualifying and the races in which he made more than a lap or two. Yoshi seemed to be on a cruise and collect at most of the races (understandable given it was his shop window to show what he can still do, but slightly disappointing for me in the lack of mongrel in his races) in comparison.

Will the Asia series discourage Filippi because of the results? I know him reasonably well, and I don't see if having much of an effect so far other than to make him angry at the pitfalls that befell him, which is probably a good thing.

On the other hand, Grosjean had things pretty easy: will that be good preparation for a brutal season in the main series? We'll see...

[chunterer]

As Jackman said, I also didn't see Filippi suffering at the hands of Yoshimoto, perfomance wise in Asia. Like Senna to an extent, Luca suffered appalling misfortune which stunted his challenge to Roman and the others in Asia and perhaps we're not emphasising this point in evaluating how the two stack up against each other.

Turkey is clearly going to be a more useful barometer as to how the two compare but maybe still too early to see which of them is going to come out on top.

Certainly although I think the Frenchman is going to ultimately take the advantage, I think the two of them will be more closely matched than say Nico and Premat or Lewis and Premat were in '05 and '06.

My take so far is that Roman is out and out more aggressive, but Filippi is perhaps a more cunning driver. Again in contrast there were at least a couple of rounds in Asia where Luca was meteoric in the opening laps of a race......

[Mekola]

We have a full season to see the results on all this... In papers, Grosjean is the favourite to shine but...

[Sev]

Yup. Filippi. Awesome.

[Bleu]

Filippi had awful race. Of course he stalled, but then he was very unfair at the end, let Grosjean go easily but kept Zuber behind very long, destroying the battle for 2nd then.

[Jimmy Magnusson]

Originally Posted by Bleu

Filippi had awful race. Of course he stalled, but then he was very unfair at the end, let Grosjean go easily but kept Zuber behind very long, destroying the battle for 2nd then.

I'm sure Romain will buy him a beer.

[Jackman]

Originally Posted by Bleu

Filippi had awful race. Of course he stalled, but then he was very unfair at the end, let Grosjean go easily but kept Zuber behind very long, destroying the battle for 2nd then.

No he didn't: it was only a couple of fast corners, despite what Zuber said.

[chunterer]

Well at Monaco, both ART drivers had very mixed weekends, but Grosjean still appeared to have the edge.

That's 6 races down and Filippi has not looked like the driver we saw last season. Can he recover any form or has he been 'negged' out of it already?

[OJB]

Maybe ART will promote Hulkenberg, who equally doesn't seem to be getting anywhere in F3 because the competition is so huge. He seems to be the fastest (or one of the fastest) but hasn't had much luck so far.

As for Filippi, I'm stunned at his start to the season. It really has been awful!

[chunterer]

Well Euro F3's only just started (but then so has GP2) so Nico's got plenty of time left to put his challenge together. I would've thought Nico's in line a drive next season in their GP2 team, Filippi's surely got money invested for the whole season - he's bound to sort things out shortly?