{"id":8459,"date":"2010-09-20T07:02:53","date_gmt":"2010-09-20T11:02:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/?p=8459"},"modified":"2010-09-20T07:02:53","modified_gmt":"2010-09-20T11:02:53","slug":"virgin-to-evaluate-dambrosio-in-friday-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/formula-1\/virgin-to-evaluate-dambrosio-in-friday-practice\/","title":{"rendered":"Virgin to &#8216;evaluate&#8217; d&#8217;Ambrosio in Friday practice"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"_mcePaste\">Jerome d&#8217;Ambrosio will replace Virgin regular Lucas di Grassi for four of the remaining five Friday morning practice sessions in 2010.<\/div>\n<div id=\"_mcePaste\">Recent speculation hinted at the possibility of a 2011 race seat for the Belgian GP2 driver, whose manager has revealed he has already raised the majority of the necessary budget.<\/div>\n<div id=\"_mcePaste\">Manager Yves Decorte told a newspaper last week: &#8220;And if we can do it quickly, he might even be able to drive on a Friday morning at the end of the season.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div id=\"_mcePaste\">But Virgin has not confirmed that the Gravity-managed d&#8217;Ambrosio, 24, is definitely replacing Brazilian rookie di Grassi next year.<\/div>\n<div id=\"_mcePaste\">&#8220;We have a contract with Timo Glock for another two years and an option on the services of Lucas di Grassi for next year,&#8221; insisted team chief executive Graeme Lowdon.<\/div>\n<div id=\"_mcePaste\">&#8220;Both drivers have done an outstanding job for us in our debut season.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div id=\"_mcePaste\">The new British team said d&#8217;Ambrosio has been signed only &#8220;in an evaluation role&#8221; for the forthcoming rounds in Singapore, Japan, Korea and Brazil, explaining that Virgin &#8220;will be using this opportunity to evaluate Jerome&#8217;s potential&#8221;.<\/div>\n<div id=\"_mcePaste\">D&#8217;Ambrosio, who started the 2010 season as a Renault test driver, will also contest the end-of-season young driver test after the Abu Dhabi season finale, Virgin announced.<\/div>\n<div id=\"_mcePaste\">&#8220;We are always looking to progress new racing talent and the team out of which Virgin Racing was born has a long history of this,&#8221; added Lowdon.<\/div>\n<div id=\"_mcePaste\">D&#8217;Ambrosio said: &#8220;My ultimate goal has always been to race in formula one and I am delighted to get a step closer. \u00a0Looking at the 2011 season, this will be very useful.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div id=\"_mcePaste\">Also in Abu Dhabi for the end-of-season Abu Dhabi test will be Dean Stoneman, who secures the Williams outing as a prize for becoming the new F2 champion.<\/div>\n<p><em><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jerome d&#8217;Ambrosio will replace Virgin regular Lucas di Grassi for four of the remaining five Friday morning practice sessions in 2010. Recent speculation hinted at the possibility of a 2011 race seat for the Belgian GP2 driver, whose manager has revealed he has already raised the majority of the necessary budget. Manager Yves Decorte told &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[5262,5340,275],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8459"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8459"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8461,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8459\/revisions\/8461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}