However, as revealed by Di Grassi himself, he had plenty of opportunities to drive an F1 car in the past, but lost most of them because of external reasons. Nevertheless, everything turned out just fine, as he used the extra time to gain experience and become more mature in his racing before finally fulfilling his F1 dream.
“I think the opportunity slipped a couple of times. I think sometimes for a good reason, sometimes for a bad reason. If I had been in F1 maybe four years ago I would not have had the chance to have a long career as I have now, because I'm much more experienced and much more mature than I was three or four years ago,” said Di Grassi.
However, he insisted that the enthusiasm of debuting in Formula One has remained the same over the course of all these years, during which he trained intensively for becoming a better driver.
“It has been a lot of preparation and a lot of hard work for the past years. And finally to get a race seat this year is just a dream come true. It's amazing,” added the Brazilian driver, who used to race in the GP2 Series for the past 4 years.
In addition, Di Grassi argued that, in the past, he had battled plenty of drivers who are now part of Formula One – some of them even with great success – and this is reason enough to believe he can also be successful in the series. Only not necessarily from the very first season.
“I've had quite a few team-mates that had succeeded in F1, and also people I was fighting with. I had Buemi as my team-mate in ART in 2007, I had Glock as I was fighting for the title in 2007, I was fighting with Kubica and Vettel in F3 in 2005, I was fighting with Kobayashi in GP2, with Lewis, with Rosberg in F3. So for many years I have been at the same level that the guys that are in F1 now,” added the Brazilian driver.
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