The GP2 Series doesn’t stop during the final part of the season and after competing last weekend in Italy, the Racing Engineering team is already on the way to Belgium to face, from Friday, the penultimate event of the 2007 championship.
It will be at yet another track full of history, Spa-Francorchamps, for most people the “track of tracks” andit will be one of the biggest challenges of the year for the young drivers racing in the F1 feeder series. The two Spanish Racing Engineering drivers, Javier Villa and Marcos Martínez, are looking forward to the challenge.
For both men it will be their first race at the difficult track located in the Ardennes forest, a circuit where driving skills still make a difference and, for that reason, where a good result is more valuable than anywhere else. Shining at Spa means to a chance to catch the eye of the international press and the F1 teams, with whom the GP2 will share the spotlight for last time this year in Belgium before the premier category of motorsport heads away from Europe for their final races while the GP2 circus closes its schedule at Valencia.
The Telefónica and Repsol liveried Dallaras will have a great chance to score a prestigious result on the return of the GP2 series to Spa-Francorchamps after a year’s absence. With the only change on the circuit layout being at the last chicane, the Belgian track keeps all its personality with corner names redolent of motor sport history such as La Source, Eau Rouge, Malmedy and Stavelot. Especially important will be the famous Raidillon which will be a key point on the track that has plenty of rhythm changes and is almost totally different to any other in the GP2 schedule.
All this means that Javier Villa and Marcos Martínez are keen to witness for themselves all the things they have seen and heard about Spa. For Javier a good result on the Ardennes track will certainly put him in the reckoning as one of the big hopes of world motor sport.
After the bad luck that hampered his chances at Monza, Javi aims to be once again fighting for the top positions and repeat such spectacular moves as his double overtaking at the end of Monza’s straight that gave him the lead in the opening stages of the last race. Marcos, on his part, will have at Spa a great chance to dramatically improve his experience at the wheel of the Dallara GP2, building on the very good progress he’s already shown since his debut a month ago.
His laptimes throughout the Monza weekend were a further proof of how quickly Marcos is getting used to the category despite the handicap of joining the team when the season was already nearing its end. From Friday morning the GP2 cars will start to run on the Spa-Francorchamps tarmac looking for that ideal setup that is often tricky to get here given the unpredictable weather at the Ardennes forest, another factor to deal with in a race weekend that all the competitors are impatient to begin.
