Racing Engineering Preview
The short GP2 series summer holiday comes to an end and it’s time again for Racing Engineering and their fellow competitors to return to action, which this weekend starts on Friday at the spectacular track of Istanbul Park, on the outskirts of the populous Turkish city, where the eight race meeting of the season for the F1 feeder series will be held.
The summer break has been really good for all the Racing Engineering staff allowing them to recover their energy after the frantic activity of last month with four race weekends in a little over 30 days.
This was a period of intense activity for the team backed by Repsol and Telefónica and it produced three victories for their driver Javier Villa as the highlight.
Javi’s triumphs in the sprint races at Magny Cours, the Nurburgring and the Hungaroring has been a huge joy for the whole Sanlucar de Barrameda based team, richly rewarding all the work done during the year and launching the young driver to the top ranks of the series standings and the front covers of the national and international press. However motorsport doesn’t rest and in a world like this where the most important result is always the last it’s crucial to keep looking forward and to continue facing each event with the same determination while looking for yet more success.
This will be exactly the frame of mind for Racing Engineering at Istanbul Park where they will arrive with the same driver line-up that was presented in Hungary, with the two young Spaniards Javier Villa and Marcos Martínez; this will be the driver pairing for the remaining races of the season for the Telefónica and Repsol liveried cars.
Logically, the targets for Javier and Marcos will be quite different in Turkey, while Javi will try to continue his rise to the top of the category focusing mainly in getting his best qualifying result of the season in order to fight for the top positions in Saturday’s feature race, Marcos will face what is, in fact, his GP2 maiden race so he arrives at Istanbul very motivated and with a great will to succeed. He is looking forward to driving the Dallara GP2 on a track he doesn’t know yet but it is one that most drivers like and it is where he intends to start showing his form in the category.
The Istanbul Park track is one of the latest to be included in the F1 schedule starting in 2005 it has, from the very first moment, become one of the favourites of the drivers. With unique corners like the impressive turn 8 triple apex and the very fast sections such as the final one heading to the last chicane, Istanbul Park also offers plenty of overtaking spots thanks to its width and its general configuration.
This paired with GP2’s usual close racing and the natural aggression of its young chargers combine to produce what could be two of the most exciting races of the year. It’s an ideal scenario for the Racing Engineering drivers to shine again in a season that has so far been very positive for the Spanish team, with three wins and a second place the team is now setting its target to adding more such results to its tally before the end of the season.
