Pla Delighed with Sunday Double

Pla was struggling to finish ninth in yesterday's race one but was moved one spot when Ernesto Viso was disqualified from seventh. This proved crucial, as the grid for race two is reversed for the top eight finishers only, which put Pla in pole position for today's race.

Pla made the most of his good fortune - he had a quick getaway at the start and remained in the lead throughout the race.

"We deserve this result," Pla stated afterwards. "It's really good for the team, even if we were a bit lucky with the Viso penalty yesterday which put me on pole today. And I showed that I can win in front of guys like Pantano and Speed, and the gap to them was really good.

"We were quick in qualifying, were in the top four, but yesterday in the race we had a lot of problems, like an anti-stall problem when I went down through the gears, and we lost a lot of time in the pitstop and finished ninth, but we should have been in the top four."

"But today I could be really, really consistent - my team and my engineers did a really good job on set up, and I have nothing to say except that the car was perfect."

Pla acknowledged that his two wins have gone some way to helping remove the black clouds he seemed to be carrying around for the first half of the season after seeing a number of promising results lost due to a series of spins, but also noted that the camaraderie in the DPR team never faltered.

"Oh, for sure - there was a really good atmosphere even when we had the problems, but Dave [Price] was really, really nice with me and helped me to keep the motivation, and so I am really happy to work with him. And now it's even better, so it's great."

The only negative for today's race from Pla's perspective was losing the fastest lap to Nico Rosberg in the closing section of the race as the German was recovering from a spin after trying to overtake Scott Speed and Giorgio Pantano.

Despite missing the two points, Pla could still see the light side of his recent form: "For sure I wanted to have the best lap, but Rosberg took it just at the end.

"But I'd rather win the race than take the best lap and end up in the gravel!"