Bianchi Surges In The Thriving Marussia

[OverTake.gg]

Marussia's 2013 season continues to get off to a high, thanks to their two new drivers. Max Chilton who claimed 16th place and Force India reject Jules Bianchi claimed a well respected 13th place for the Banbury based team.



Image: motorsport

The Frenchman amazed the crowd with his pace in the Marussia, he was over a second quicker than Chilton at one point, on Saturday afternoon's Qualifying session . Initially Bianchi had a poor start from the grid, going backwards rather than forwards. Which in turn made it more difficult for himself, as he could of been higher placed. But Bianchi soon got into the rhythm, by starting to pass a few cars. Until he caught up with a Caterham, who kept The Frenchman at bay for quite a few laps. Bianchi reported after the race, that if the Marussia hadn't of been in his way, he could of been placed alot high.

Bianchi meanwhile is hoping the trend continues at team Marussia, revealing his is more than satisfied with the progress the team are making. Last week RaceDepartment reported Marussia and Caterham were in merging talks over Christmas, at the end of last season. But with Marussia's car getting better and better, who would of thought they were even considering merging.

Bianchi told Crash:
“Obviously I'm delighted to finish 13th today, after 15th in my first race last weekend. After 18 laps or so I was able to get back into position and from then on I was very happy with my progress. It was nice to have held off Maldonado and to maintain the gap for so long. This shows we have the car to fight with them in the future. There are some things to learn from and improve after today and the weekend generally, but we have also made more progress already since Melbourne and we need to keep pushing. My thanks to the team for a lot of hard work and more to come between now and China.”

Marussia are "Pleased" with the progress both of their two new drivers are making. The team have stated that each driver is providing excellent feedback and working well with their Race Engineers to find where they can improve their times.

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[Sk3ptik0n]

Dan, nice article. I have only one complaint and I feel really awkward pointing this out, since English is my second language, so let me apologize in advance in case I offend you. I have a pet peeve. That is when writers use "of" instead of "have" as in these two examples from this article":

"as he could of been higher placed"
"who would of thought they were even considering merging"

Of course, the right form would have been "would have been" and "could have thought"

I know that so many people write it with the "of", but that doesn't make it right. Trust me, I make many mistakes myself, such a 'hte' instead of 'the' or 'don;t' instead of 'don't'. It doesn't make me correct either.

You write some nice articles and I enjoy reading your thoughts on motorsports. Silly errors like that take some of the enjoyment away.

BTW, I tried sending this note from the internal commenting system, but I wasn't able to PM you. It would be nice to have a link for communications such as this one.
Keep up the good work.

 

[Chris]

IMO Force India should've have dropped Di Resta for Bianchi. They'd have a considerably stronger team in Sutil and Bianchi.

Still, glad to see that Marussia have given Bianchi a chance, because he clearly deserves to be in Formula 1, and probably in a more competitive team.

 

[Peter Hooper]

Nice article Dan,

Bianchi looks class and it will be interesting to see whether Chilton can support him enough in the battle of the smaller teams.

Agree that Bianchi has done a stellar job in the first two races but don;t think dropping DiResta would have been the correct thing to do. He was after all running stronger than Sutil in this race and only the wheel nut problem stopped him from having a good result. I think the Force India pairing are very good and we are going to see a strong battle between them for the remainder of the season.

 

[Markus Neumann]

I have to admit, I didn't expect Bianchi to do this well. Chilton had the big advantage of being able to use almost every single day of winter testing and yet Bianchi came in and is just giving him a complete thrashing now.

 

[Hampus Andersson]

He´s started strong no doubt. It will be interesting to see if he keeps the ball rolling throughout the season.

 

[Jordi Casademunt]

I hope when he makes a mistake people remember that he's a rookie.

But yeah, it's a strong start. Who knows, with a crazy race, he might get the first point for Marussia.