GP2 Technical Director, Didier Perrin, talks about the new GP2 car good performance and reliability.

What conclusion can you draw after this first day?
We've had a very encouraging first day regarding the future reliability of our car. Our original plan was to do some sort of a shakedown, making sure that everything was in place and that all the different functionalities on the car worked properly. However, we obtained much more than that: by the end of the day, the teams were already working on the performance of the car which is quite the accomplishment for a first run. The results definitely exceeded our expectations.

What was the biggest challenge of the day for the teams?
The first batch of cars was delivered on time mid-January and the second was delivered prior to the 15th of this month, again as planned. Therefore, the teams had six weeks to prepare for this first run. The biggest challenge was for them to get acquainted with the car and its many new parts: hydraulic system, cooling system, a new carbon clutch, new software, a front suspension with torsion bars… everything is new basically! We were very happy and pleased to note that all the teams succeeded to take control of all these new devices and functionalities in just one day.

Ben Hanley topped the time sheet in a 1:12.652. That's quite fast for a first run…
Yes, quite. Ben's lap time came close to the fastest lap time ever achieved on this track with the same tyres, but on the old car. We have to keep in mind that the teams still don't have the complete knowledge of this car and that they haven't really had the time to work on set ups yet, but in a matter of a few hours, they reached the same level of performance they had with the old one. It certainly proves the great potential of our new car. We knew it was there and it is definitely great to see it happen on the track!

Still, there were some minor incidents…
It's pretty normal to have few little glitches on such a complex car. Today, we achieved almost 3900kms which is more or less the same distance we achieved with the development car. We are pleasantly surprised to realize that we have very few glitches to sort out. We will have to work on these minor problems with our official suppliers Dallara and Mecachrome in the next days, but we know exactly what needs to be done and we are convinced we will be able to fix everything very quickly.