.....for Racing Engineering
Racing Engineering had a day to forget in Bahrain whenproblems in qualifying meant that the team was unable to fightfor points in the penultimate race in the 2005 GP2championship.
Bahrain was the first GP2 race that wasn't held at a Formula Oneweekend, and the format was changed slightly with no free practiceand two qualifying sessions held on the same day as race one.Racing Engineering had an entirely new car for Neel Jani after theSwiss driver's massive accident in race two at Spa-Francorchampsdestroyed his existing chassis, and a problem with a component onthe new car meant that Neel was unable to run a single timed lap ineither session.
He was allowed to race but started at the back of thegrid, while Borja Garcia suffered from understeer and qualified 13th.Unfortunately the race didn't offer any respite for the RacingEngineering drivers – Borja suffered from both understeer andoversteer, making the car incredibly difficult to drive, and he finishedthree laps down in 19th. Neel had a difficult time after starting at theback, but fought strongly to be in 16th at the end of the race.Neel Jani: "There's not a lot to say about with qualy – I didn't do asingle lap because we had a problem on the car, which was strangeas it was new one. In the race my start was not too bad, and I had towait for Borja to go in after the safety car before I could stop. It wasmy first laps here, and we didn't know about the set up of the car, butI finished 16th. Hopefully I'll be able to go better tomorrow."Borja Garcia: "Qualifying was not bad for me, but on the second set Ihad a little understeer. For the race my pitstop was quite good, butafter that the car had a lot of understeer and oversteer, so the tyresended up like slicks."
Alfonso de Orleáns-Borbón: "Qualifying was what we expected givenour lack of experience at this track, and we had a lot of trouble withNeel's car. With regards to the race, would total disaster be a gooddescription? I think the boys did a great job, but with Neel's car beingentirely new it was kind of like starting the season again and we hadto iron out problems in it. Borja also had problems, but we had to livewith that."
