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Barcelona testing session, 4th and 5th March 2008 |
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Wednesday, 05 March 2008 |
A week after the private test session held on the Paul Ricard circuit in France,
the DAMS Team was back at work again on the Barcelona layout in Spain for a
2-day test session to prepare for the 2008 GP2 Series Championship. Kamui
Kobayashi and Jérôme d’Ambrosio continued getting to grips with the new
single-seater and set some promising times.
Yesterday, the Japanese was quickest overall in 1m 26.806s and he ended today in
6th place, only 0.229s off the no.1 spot. Kamui looked on course to go quickest
until a number of interruptions of the session dashed his chances. His team-mate
was 8th yesterday evening, but went the wrong way in his set-up choices and was
unable to shine today.
The next test session, the last before the season
kicks off, will take place at Paul Ricard on 12th/13th March.
Eric
Boullier, team manager: “Unlike Paul Ricard the Barcelona circuit mirrors fairly
accurately the overall conditions that we’ll meet this season. We’ve been
competitive here so that’s a good sign. Unfortunately, we didn’t cover as many
laps as we’d have liked these past two days. The new car’s still suffering from
some teething troubles: the gearbox, the clutch and the electronics are playing
up. Despite everything we tried to complete our technical programme and
continued preparing for the first race. The 2008 car requires a different set-up
to the old model, and even though we found a few interesting avenues to explore,
we’ve still got a lot of work to do before we’ll understand it fully.”
Kamui Kobayashi
Day 1, morning: 1m 28.092s, fourth-quickest
time
Day 1, afternoon: 1m 26.806s, fastest time
Day 2, morning: 1m
27.575s, sixth-quickest time
Day 2, afternoon: 1m 26.580s, sixth-quickest
time
“This session went off much better than the previous one, and I feel
that we’ve really got to grips with the new car. It’s a pity we didn’t manage to
set the fastest time again at the end of day two, but our session was
interrupted on several occasions. We leave Barcelona highly motivated, as we
know that even if we still have a lot of work to do we’re on the right
track.”
Jérôme d’Ambrosio
Day 1, morning: 1m 28.710s,
seventeenth-quickest time
Day 1, afternoon: 1m 28.306s, eighth-quickest
time
Day 2, morning: 1m 28.835s, twentieth-quickest time
Day 2, afternoon:
1m 27.990s, twenty-first quickest time
“I’m not very happy with my second
day as my performance wasn’t all that great. My engineers and myself went down
the wrong path with our set-ups, as I set my quickest time on used tyres. It’s
all part of the game when you’re preparing for a new championship: finding the
right set-up also means putting your finger on the ones that don’t work!”
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