The GP2 series doesn’t rest during the Summer and after the frantic month of July, with three race meetings in four weekends, August starts with yet another race for Racing Engineering and its fellow competitors in the F1 feeder series.
This time the venue will be the Hungaroring circuit, outside Budapest, where the seventh round of the most open and exciting GP2 season so far will be held. After the eleven races that have taken place since the start of the championship, in mid-April at Bahrain, there have been nine different winners with only two drivers being able to score more than one victory. One of these drivers is of course the young Racing Engineering protégé, Javier Villa who, with his win at the Nürburgring Sprint Race, took his second triumph of the season after a dominant performance from pole position following another of his trademark recovery drives in Saturday’s feature event.
Villa is this year fulfilling all the expectations that Racing Engineering and his main sponsors Repsol and Telefónica, put on him when they chose Javi for their GP2 team when he was barely 18 years old. After a first year learning season in 2006, Javi is showing in 2007 that both Alfonso de Orleans-Borbon and Telefónica and Repsol were right when they all saw in him a talent above the normal.
At the Hungaroring, Javi will look for another win although the closely matched GP2 field makes it nearly impossible to predict the outcome. At the Hungaroring Racing Engineering will present what will be its line-up for the remainder of the season: and it's now a 100% Spanishline-up as the Dallara number 15 will be driven by yet another young Spanish charger, Marcos Martínez.
Like Javier, Marcos comes from Spanish F3 where he has already been part of the Racing Engineering Team so he's well used to the way the team works which will make life easier for him the always tough transition from F3 to GP2.
For this, his first race at GP2 level, Marcos is aiming to gain as much experience as he can while the team will focus on setting up the car to his driving style. The arrival of Marco in GP2 is good news for Racing Engineering as it shows once again how its F3 program, made possible by the continuous support of its sponsors Repsol and Telefónica, has been really successful not only in producing victories and championships for the team but also as a great feeder for the GP2 project. Hungaroring is the second slowest track of the championship, with an average speed only superior to that of Monaco and with similar problems in overtaking. This will make the Friday qualifying session especially crucial, as to get a good result in any race held at the Hungarian track it is imperative to be well placed on the starting grid.
This will be the first target for Villa, Martínez and the whole Racing Engineering team from the Friday morning free practice session, once again the commencement of yet another long and exciting GP2 series race weekend.
