The Montreal Grand Prix lived up to its reputation as one of the most challenging circuits on the calendar and with tyre wear being abnormally high, Lucas di Grassi used three sets of tyres on his way to finishing in 19^th place.

Due to the number of pit stops from all teams, he was even able to spend some time in 10^th place, the first time the team has ever been in a points position.

But his three pit stops were out done by his team mate Timo Glock who had to pit five times during an incident packed race. The German however could not complete the race due to a problem with his power steering, he retired on lap 50.

It was therefore the young Brazilian Di Grassi who was flying the flag for Virgin as he was able to complete the race, but this didn’t go without incident.

The Virgin car once again experienced hydraulic problems, this time with six laps remaining and Di Grassi only had fourth gear available to him. Fortunately he was able to nurse the car to the finish line, but this is a recurring problem which the team need to resolve.

Despite finishing, the Virgin team ended up last in the race with the other new teams as both the Hispania car of Karun Chandhok and the Lotus of Heikki Kovalainen finished in front of them.

This was a big turn around from Turkey where the team had a two-car finish were both drivers finished ahead of the other new teams. This highlights that more upgrades are still required, mainly to improve downforce and to clamp down the reliability issues.

In qualifying it was clear to see that the car was struggling as they were challenging the Hispania cars for 21^st place, rather than the Lotus cars for 19^th. Also Di Grassi was almost a second slower than Glock in the same car.

Even though it was the Brazilian who finished, he continues to struggle in qualifying being out done by his team mate at every race this year. He was even out qualified by a Hispania car. Yes it’s his rookie year, it is for the entire team, but more is expected and he will need to improve his lap speed over the next few races.

Now the Virgin technical director, Nick Wirth, looks ahead to the European Grand Prix after what was a very enlightening experience in Canada. He said:

“The whole Canadian GP experience has been very enlightening and gives us a lot of useful information for the other lower downforce races to come. Meanwhile, we’re all looking forward to deploying some significant performance upgrades during the next two GP’s whilst we continue to improve our reliability.”

Lets hope that both cars will have improved reliability in two weeks time as Formula One returns to Europe were Virgin hope they can return to being the best of the new teams.

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