Durango reacts to race exclusion

11/06/2006
NEWS STORY

Because of the loss of Di Grassi's car rear wing during Silverstone race 1, the Stewards decided to disqualify the Durango team with both cars for race 2. They said some repairs they found on our car was not permitted by the GP2 official suppliers, and established that the cars did not conform to the standard security level.

After this decision Durango team intend to specify as following:

We recognize our mistake, we admit to have repaired the part on the car, even though it was not allowed. But we want to underline that the break was not in the same position as that we had repaired.

In the past, during GP2 winter tests, it happened to many teams to lose their rear wing.

Here in Silverstone, we asked to the organization to buy some wing spares, and GP2 answered that they had not enough spares, so they could give us material only for one car.

We want to stress the fact that we care about security and we would be the first not to enter the track if our cars were not safe. Actually to disqualify us in the name of security we underline that most of the teams have had really serious problems, such as brake disc explosion, suspensions breakages, new modified suspension with slick tyres that during impact enter the monocoque, unreliable clutches dying at the start, burning looms, also in 2005 there was an issue with rear wings failing, etc.

You can notice that also during race 1 in Silverstone there have been many gearbox failures which lost oil on the track... We find all these events really dangerous and they were not under teams responsibility, but neither the FIA technical staff nor the organization have ever decided to suspend track activities.

After 30 years experience participating in a professional championship, we can guarantee that we have enough experience to work with race cars.