This weekend Formula 1 moves to Spanish soil and marks the start of the European phase of the season in the GP2 Series 2013. Barwa Addax Team including official drivers, Jake Rosenzweig and Rio Haryanto are here in Montmelo and are highly motivated hoping for a good weekend.
This season there will be no Europa GP near the teams base in Valencia so this weekend becomes the teams home event for this season. In spite of this years new tyre norms concerning the new composition types, which have changed things so much this year, Barwa Addax Team are confident that they have the necessary experience as well as local knowledge to do well. History is on their side too. They have had great results here including two first-second place finishes in Saturdays long race in 2011 with Charles Pic and Giedo van der Garde (today these 2 make up the Caterham F1 team) and again in 2009 with Romain Grosjean (presently one of the leading drivers in Formula 1) and Vitaly Petrov official driver in Formula 1 for 3 seasons.
Jake Rosenzweig, has not had the opportunity to race on this circuit in GP2 but he does know the track after having been involved in pre-season tests there. Even though the times set were not extraordinary, the team worked very hard on finding solutions with problems concerning track and tyre temperature apart from the difficulties of getting the right set up on the car. Jake, is confident that he can do well at Montmelo and he has shown a really serious and professional attitude towards the task ahead.
Rio Haryanto, has not had the best of results so far but both team and driver are sure that they can be one of the main players this weekend. The Indonesian drivers race rhythm in the second race at Bahrain, was as quick as the leading drivers. Traditionally this is a special circuit for the Spanish team, a really technical track and Haryanto does have important racing experience at this circuit, having competed here in the GP2 2012 campaign and in the GP3 class twice, in both 2010 and 2011.
Everything starts at the 4655 meters Catalunya circuit on Friday, the 10th of May, with the free practice at 12,00 hrs and later at 15,55 the qualifying session. On Saturday the 11th at 15,40 hrs, sees the start of the first race which will be raced over 37 laps covering a total distance of 172,235 Kilometers. To finish proceedings the second race will take place at 10,35 on Sunday the 12th. The drivers will race it out over 26 laps of the circuit. All times will be Spanish local time GMT +2.
