Lucas Tucci Di Grassi (born 11 August 1984 in Sâo Paulo, Brazil) is a racing driver, whose career has revolved around karting and single seater formula racing. Having finished as runner-up to Timo Glock in the 2007 GP2 Series season, he is currently the Renault Formula One team's test driver. He is also one of five racers on the Renault Driver Development (RDD) programme. Di Grassi's career in karting peaked in 2000, with a 5th place in the Formula A World Championship. He began his formula racing career in Brazilian Formula Renault in 2002, finished as championship runner-up, and then graduated to Formula Three the following year.

    In 2003, he drove a Dallara F301 Mugen-Honda for Avallone Motorsport in Formula Three Sudamericana. He finished as the championship runner-up, with one win and eleven other podium finishes. This came despite missing the last six races after suffering a major crash at the Curitiba round. He also travelled to Europe to make four race starts in the F3 Euroseries with Prema Powerteam, achieving a best finish of fourth place. The following year, he made a permanent move to Europe and took a drive with Hitech Racing in the British F3 Championship. His season peaked with two wins, and he was classified in eighth place overall. Another of that year's highlights was a podium finish on his debut (with Hitech Racing) at the Macau Grand Prix. In 2005, Di Grassi took another step up in a full-time return to the Euroseries with Manor Motorsport. Against the dominant ASM pairing of Lewis Hamilton and Adrian Sutil he could only manage one win but ended the year third in the championship. At the end of the season, Di Grassi returned to Macau, this time with Manor, and won the event from third on the grid, although runaway F3 Euroseries champions Hamilton missed the race.


    2006 brought Di Grassi to the next stage in his career: promotion to the GP2 Grand Prix support series with Team Durango. It was a modest debut season, however, with only 8 points and 17th place in the championship standings.

    For 2007 he joined reigning champions ART Grand Prix. He scored points consistently throughout the season, failing to score only once in the first 13 races. Despite not winning a race in that time, it put him in contention for the championship along with iSport's Timo Glock. He scored his first win of the year in the 14th round of the championship at Istanbul, and took the lead of the championship, but Glock moved back ahead of him when he won the sprint race at the same event, and went on to win the title.

   Di Grassi worked on testing the new-model GP2 car (to be used between 2008 and 2010), while testing for Renault F1. However, he resumed his GP2 career in 2008 by securing a drive at Campos Racing from round 4 onwards, replacing Ben Hanley. With three second places and one fourth place finish, he was the highest-scoring driver over the first two race meetings in which he took part. Two wins followed and he briefly looked set for a surprising championship challenge, before a final lap collision with Giorgio Pantano (who was disqualified for the incident) at Spa effectively ended his hopes. He finished an eventual third, ten points behind Pantano despite six fewer races. He returned to the series for 2009 with Racing Engineering, and again finished third, finishing with the same number of points as he did in 2008.

   At the end of 2008, Di Grassi tested for the Honda Racing F1 Team alongside fellow Brazilian and GP2 rival Bruno Senna. Honda Racer Jenson Button tested the 2009 Honda and set a time around Circuit de Catalunya. Senna was just 0.3 seconds off and Di Grassi was 0.5 seconds off. Di Grassi was then sent a contract by Renault to join them as a test driver, becoming the third GP2 runner-up to join Renault as a test driver alongside Heikki Kovalainen and fellow Brazilian Nelson Piquet Jr.

   Di Grassi will join Timo Glock at new team Virgin Racing for 2010. The team were originally called Manor but rebranded when Virgin Group owner Richard Branson purchased a 20% stake in the team.

(c) Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2009