Dudukalo loses LADA seat

The LADA Sport Lukoil team are working against the clock to rebuild the two Granta racing cars that suffered from extensive damage in an incident occurred during last Saturday’s qualifying session at Monza.

Aleksei Dudukalo missed the braking point at the first chicane and t-boned the sister car of James Thompson. This forced the team to withdraw both cars from the Italian event.

“It was very disappointing missing the first races of the year, but safety comes first and we did not want to take any risks. The sort of repairs that were needed could only take place back at base in Magny-Cours and this is why we took that tough decision. Now our main task is to prepare ourselves for the races in Marrakech,” team principal Victor Shapovalov explained.

As they hope to fix both cars in time to be shipped to Morocco, the team have entered young Russian driver Mikhail Kozlovskiy in the place of Dudukalo.