Racing Engineering and their fellow GP2 series competitors have this weekend a date with one of the tracks with the most history in the motor sport:, the “Autodromo Nazionale di Monza” near Milan.
The races at the Italian Grand Prix will mark the start of the last third of the season for the F1 feeder series, a season full of excitement and changes, with Racing Engineering’s Javier Villa usually among the stars of each weekend. With three wins so far, Javi is already one of the favourites for each GP2 event and at Monza his target will be to fight again for the top positions and to keep himself in the forefront of the overall standings.
For his team-mate, Marcos Martínez, it will be a matter of continuing to build on the progress already shown on the difficult Istanbul Park at the wheel of the GP2 car. Here he finished his first race in the category showing big improvements in his knowledge of the GP2 Dallara, all very different to the F3 and World Series cars he has driven so far.
With both drivers, Racing Engineering and its sponsors, Repsol and Telefónica, will go continue at Monza with their 100% Spanish team. A team with two young drivers with a great future ahead and both coming from Racing Engineering’s own F3 program, they have already moved into GP2 and are heading towards the premier motor sport category.
The continuously improving results make them a good bet in each race and are encouraging the Spanish team and its backers to keep following the same path with the target of finishing the season among the top teams of the GP2 series.
The very fast track at Monza’s park is still a “temple of speed” albeit the chicanes that have been added to its layout along the years has really changed its original character.
The Italian track is always the place where the cars reach their highest speeds of the season, which linked to the heavy braking for the “variantes” and the surrounding high kerbs make for quite a challenge for the teams when looking for a setup to cope with such opposite characteristics.
If, on one hand, it is necessary to look for an aerodynamic configuration with minimal drag and a chassis with the maximum rigidity to be as fast as possible on the straights, on the other it is also crucial to have dampers that allow the car to “jump” the kerbs without loosing controlas well as a very balanced chassis capable of absorbing the huge mass transfers due at every one of the Monza hard braking areas.
A really complex job that all the Racing Engineering technical staff will face with determination from the free practice session due on Friday morning that will signal the start of the ninth race meeting of the GP2 2007 series.
