The GP2 Series arrives in Silverstone, England, this weekend for round five of the 2007 season.
After last weekend’s incident-filled and emotional races, the series now boasts a staggering seven different race winning drivers, from seven different teams in the first seven races of the season. All of this comes with double champions ART Grand Prix yet to reach the top step of the podium. In fact a small look at the history books brings the incredible statistic that it was here, at Silverstone, more than 12 months ago, when the French team last won a GP2 Series race.
Butterflies and Hurricanes: British summertime has officially arrived!
A typically tropical mêlée of glorious sunshine and flood-inducing torrential rain has been battering the UK for the last month and shows no sign of abating this weekend.
The GP2 Series teams will be using the hard compound Bridgestone Potenza tyre in Silverstone, although a look at the weather forecast suggests they’ll be getting through more wets than dries. We welcome a new driver to the GP2 Series this weekend. Following his high-speed accident, Ernesto Viso has naturally been required to sit this one out, and into the #15 Racing Engineering car steps Filipe Albuquerque, who currently sits third in the World Series Renault standings, and has prior experience with Racing Engineering, having partnered Javier Villa in Spanish F3 back in 2005. The team hopes this cohesion will bring rewards just a week after they took their first victory of 2007 with Javier Villa in Sunday’s race in France. Silverstone is one of the drivers’ favourite circuits.
The incredibly fast and demanding opening section of the track is a true test of nerve, and last year saw Lewis Hamilton pull off one of the moves of the season in a three-wide attack on Nelson Piquet Jr and Clivio Piccione through Becketts. From here, the track winds through the often windy back section of the track, before pulling down under the bridge and into the tricky and tight final stadium section.
As such a compromise must be reached between optimizing straight line speed and maintaining traction and downforce for the slower corners. What about the championship? Despite gathering “nul points” in last weekend’s racing, Championship leader Timo Glock did manage to extend his points tally with pole position. That left him on 39 points, while a double points haul from Luca Filippi including a podium on Sunady has pulled the Italian to within 8 points of the German. Third place in the championship battle is taken by Lucas di Grassi on 29, just two points behind Luca, while Bruno Senna sits fourth on 24, one point ahead of Giorgio Pantano in fifth. In the teams’ championship it is iSport International who still lead the way on 45 points, now just ten ahead of their closest rivals ART Grand Prix who, despite not having won a race in over a year, have maintained points scoring consistency to mount a serious challenge.
Super Nova International are two points behind the champions on 33, with Campos Grand Prix one point behind them on 32 and Arden International fifth on 30. We would like to remind the media that GP2 Series Press Conferences will take place at 18:00 after Qualifying on Friday and at 17:10 on Saturday after Race 1. As usual, Press Conferences will be held in the GP2 Series Hospitality Unit.
