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VX Racing Starts As It Means To Go On |
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Tuesday, 13 March 2007 |
VX Racing’s Fabrizio Giovanardi topped the times in today’s first official Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship test session of 2007.
Vauxhall spent the winter developing a new race car, the Vectra Hatchback, to comply with the BTCC’s S2000 regulations. Rockingham Raceway today saw the result with Giovanardi, a multiple European Touring Car Champion, leading from start to finish with a best time of 1m24.806s after 58 laps.
Team-mate, Tom Chilton, finished sixth after spending the afternoon
working on race set-up and development in today’s perfect weather
conditions, which saw him complete 64 laps at the Northants circuit.
The team will now head to the next test at Valencia, Spain, to complete
the final preparations for the season opener at Brands Hatch, which
will take place on 1 April 2007.
Fabrizio Giovanardi - "I immediately felt it was a good car in the
pre-season testing and a big difference compared to the Astra. The team
thinks the potential of this car is much better because of its
consistency on long runs; that can make the difference and this car is
both fast and consistent.
"The team has done a really good job over the winter; to make a new car
is not so easy. I tried to transport my experience and I think we’ve
worked well together.
"As for my ambitions this year, if I look at the later part of last
season, my performance was better and I hope to start in the same
position. I hope to win and I think from the beginning we will be fast."
Tom Chilton - "We are only in the basic stages of setting the
car up and there is so much more to come. One of the most encouraging
things is the tyre wear. The independent wish bone suspension has made
a real difference and I’m very happy with how well the testing
programme went today."
Ian Harrison, VX Racing Team Principal - "We are still doing our
testing programme and there’s a lot of things we haven’t had a chance
to play with yet. It’s early days and we are definitely at the right
end but we still have no idea where we are in relation to everybody
else. All we can do is concentrate on what we are doing and make sure
the car is as quick as we can make it.
"Somebody like Fabrizio is a class act. You give him ten laps and you
have to expect him to get to grips with it. Tom hasn’t had as much time
in the car over the winter but we’ve got another big test next week.
"This is the first time we’ve tested on a circuit we are going to race
on. We’ll have to crunch numbers tomorrow and see where we are in terms
of tyre wear but it's looking good."
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