Luca Filippi and Sakon Yamamoto ride the GP2 merry-go-round

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Luca Filippi has lost his ART seat to ex-Formula 1 driver Sakon Yamamoto.

In the latest GP2 driver market move Filippi has switched to Arden taking Yelmer Buurman’s place, leaving the Dutchman without a drive.

Rumours suggest a falling-out between Filippi and ART, allegedly because the team neglected the Italian while favouring Romain Grosjean, who won the GP2 Asia title with them. Filippi did the Asian series with new team Qi-Meritus Mahara.

Yamamoto did 11 races for BCN last year. He left the team after the Nurburgring round to drive for Spyker in F1, but was dropped by the team at the end of the year.

He is now, like Grosjean, a Renault test driver, although he appears to have done little to no mileage for the team.

Buurman had finished eight out of ten races for Arden this year. His only points score so far was second in the wet Magny-Cours sprint race, which he had led before being passed by team mate Sebastien Buemi. He also drove for Arden in GP2 Asia.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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