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Racing Engineering –GP2 Barcelona Preview |
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Monday, 14 May 2007 |
For Racing Engineering the second meeting of the 2007 GP2 series, to be held this weekend at Montmeló, is a special one as the races at the Catalonian track will be the first of the two events scheduled this season in Spain so motivation will be at a high for the team to perform at its best on home soil and in front of their fans and their main sponsors, Spanish companies Repsol and Telefónica.
At Montmeló the 2007 GP2 start its long European season paired with the F1 schedule after starting three weeks ago in Bahrain. There mechanical problems, with externally supplied components, caused problems in the practice sessions with the result that both the Racing Engineering drivers, Javier Villa and Sergio Jiménez, couldn’t achieve the results that their race pace showed were within their reach. The target at the Catalonian track will therefore be to look from the start for a good qualifying result in order to allow Javi and Sergio to fight for good positions in the races.
The two young Racing Engineering drivers arrive at Montmeló in a
positive frame of mind based on some solid reasons. For Villa it will
be a race in front of his fans, with the extra motivation that means as
a large number of them are expected to arrive from his homeland of
Asturias to cheer him from the always packed Montmeló grandstands.
Further Javi expects to make good use of the experience gained here
last year, when he finished both races, to be in a position to race in
the top half of the field. Equally for Sergio this will be one of the
few chances he will have this year to race on a track he already knows
from his season in Spanish F3, so this time he won’t need to waste the
brief practice time available in GP2 weekends learning the track, and
instead he can immediately focus on setting the car up in order to push
for the best possible lap times and show again both his potential and
his continued progress at the wheel of the GP2 Dallara.
The circuit of Montmeló is one of the best known tracks to the GP2
teams as it is usually the site for some of the preseason practice
sessions. The main change this year at the track located near Barcelona
is the new ‘chicane’ built on its final part where before there was a
double downhill right hander heading to the main straight. This is a
really important layout change regarding car setup as the long and fast
corner is now a slow sequence that will allow the cars to enter the
main straight far closer, as now the reduced downforce caused by the
car in front will be of far less significance, allowing for more
overtaking chances at the end of the straight. In turn this will mean
that top speed will be really crucial and in order to get as much as
possible without compromising the car balance it will be very important
to work hard with the different setup possibilities allowed by the new
aerodynamic package of the GP2 Dallara.
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