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Q&A: Didier Perrin – GP2 Series Technical Director |
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Tuesday, 15 May 2007 |
Two weekends into the 2007 season, and the GP2 Series has witnessed four fascinating races, four different race winners and thrilling contests from first to last place. We spoke to GP2 Series Technical Director Didier Perrin to discuss whether the 2007-specification car was meeting preseason expectations on track.
GP2 Series: Two weekends into the 2007 season and we’ve seen four great races. How pleased are you with the 2007 aerodynamic package and updates to the GP2 Series car?
Didier Perrin: I am more than happy as our targets with the new kit were first to improve our performance to maintain the gap with F1 which was a success (our pole man in Barcelona was less than 6 seconds from the F1 mid-grid) and secondly to force the teams to make set-up changes from 2006 in order to set all the teams on a level playing field at the beginning of the season. As we have seen four different winners from four different teams for our first four races it is clear that we have also achieved our second goal.
GP2 Series: Both Bahrain and Barcelona were very hot races with
which to begin the season. Were you happy with the level of reliability
we saw?
Didier: As the Technical Director of the GP2 Series, I am afraid
that I am probably the most difficult person to satisfy in terms of
reliability. I am happy when absolutely no reliability problems affect
a race, which was the case for example in Barcelona Race 2 despite the
fact that only 15cars crossed the finish line!
Hot ambient temperatures make both the teams and drivers’ tasks more
difficult as it tends to reduce the margin of error that the car is
able to tolerate.
During the entire 2006 GP2 season, only 2.4 % of the cars that started
a race stopped due to an engine reliability problem. People could say
that the GP2 Series reached a correct level of reliability, but I don’t
like this way of thinking and with our partners in the Series we
constantly strive to improve our performance and reliability and we
will continue to push in 2007.
GP2 Series: We’ve seen an unusually high number of aborted starts so
far in 2007, both in Bahrain and Spain. Can you explain the reasons for
the grid problems?
Didier: First, consider the fact that, unlike in Formula One, GP2
Series cars are not equipped with dozens of electronic tools to help
the driver at the starts, or during the races, and this makes a big
difference, particularly in the start procedure.
For example, let’s try to analyse what a GP2 Series driver on one of
the first grid rows can have in mind in the seconds before the start.
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