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Lucas di Grassi Crashes Virgin VR-01 into the Barriers

A few months ago we have reported to you that Virgin Group's Sir Richard Branson and Lotus F1's CEO Tony Fernandes – both owning some private airline companies of their own – made an interesting bet on who will rank the highest in the 2010 Formula One championship.

Well, after the first few testing sessions this winter, it seems the two newly-entered teams are still very much head-to-head in terms of lap times, performances, spare parts and... crashes. Following Heikki Kovalainen's crashing his Lotus T127 into the barriers on Thursday, it was Virgin Racing's turn to see their VR-01 smashed into the barriers on Friday.

And it was Lucas di Grassi who drove the car earlier today, but it lasted less than an hour. Just before the one-hour mark, the Brazilian driver had recorded a more than decent 1:31.6 lap time, making the members of the British team hit the laptops and tweet something like:

Good ol' Grassi has pulled a 1m31.6s lap out already! How's that for a Friday feeling!

Less than 5 minutes later, Di Grassi lost control of his car into one of the circuit's chicanes and his car was acquainted with the barriers. Although there was no initial sign of damage to the Virgin Racing car, the VR-01 was immediately carried to the garage with its rear part all covered up.

Fortunately for the team, after more than half an hour spent in the garage, the mechanics managed to solve the problems caused by the crash and Di Grassi was able to resume his testing mileage around 10.30 AM.

As compared to the other testing days so far, the sun came up from the early hours of Friday providing some dry testing for the first time in weeks. After one and a half hour of testing, Jenson Button leads the timing reports, ahead of Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso.
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