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Racing Engineering – GP2 Silverstone – Preview |
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Wednesday, 04 July 2007 |
With almost no time to recover from the highs and lows that Racing Engineering went through at the Magny Cours GP2 series weekend, it’s already time for the team to focus again on the next important date of its 2007 campaign. From Friday the GP2 cars will be back in action, this time the scene will be the historic track of Silverstone, the venue of the British F1 Grand Prix.
Racing Engineering arrives at the classic Northamptonshire
circuit with last Sunday’s magnificent victory of its driver
Javier Villa still being news in the international press.
Villa’s victory was based on a great recovery race on Saturday
from the back of the pack to seventh which put him in the front row for
Sunday’s race. It was a further demonstration of the young
Spaniard’s talent, something that led Racing Engineering and
its main sponsors, Repsol and Telefónica, to support him and to
begin last year a project that is giving better and better results as
time goes by. The podium finish at Barcelona, the victory in France
and the continuous display of speed and maturity shown by
Villa throughout the season are making him one of the drivers to keep
an eye on. He is already sixth overall in the series standings, the
same place that is occupied by Racing Engineering in the team table.
Villa’s triumph was also the third for Racing Engineering in the GP2
series after the two wins scored with Neel Jani in the 2005 season.
At Silverstone Javier’s number 14 Dallara will be
closely followed by the knowledgeable British crowd and in the
other car, the number 15, they will see yet another young charger, the
Portuguese Filipe Albuquerque, who has already worked with Racing
Engineering in the Spanish F3 series where he was Villa’s team-mate.
This will make for an ideal coordination between the drivers and the
team, allowing Filipe, the 2006 Formula Renault Europe champion, to
fully focus on maximising this great opportunity to drive one
of the Racing Engineering’s GP2 cars. Filipe will stand in at
Silverstone for Ernesto Viso as the Venezuelan driver has not yet
received the all clear from the doctors following his accident last
Saturday at Magny Cours. This unfortunate incident
showed up the professionalism and the great work ethic of
the whole Racing Engineering technical staff as they were able to
build a totally new car despite the pressure of such a short gap
between the French and British races.
The British race weekend, the fifth of the 2007 season, should mean for
Racing Engineering a further step up in its positive development
since the start of the season. The fast and very technical
Silverstone track requires some difficult setup work,
especially at the aerodynamic level to reach the
necessary compromise between maximum speed and maximum downforce
required to be as quick as possible at critical corners such
as Copse, Becketts or Stowe, without losing efficiency in the
final and very twisty complex. The track, built around a
former WWII airfield, is one of those where all drivers
would like to shine. Both Racing Engineering drivers are no
exception to this and they are already looking forward to being at
the wheel of their Dallaras for the first free practice session due on
Friday morning.
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