21/08/2008
NEWS STORY
The short summer holiday for the GP2 Series comes to its end this Friday with the beginning of the weekend's activity for Racing Engineering and all its rivals in one of the most awaited dates of the year: the competition on the new street circuit of Valencia.
The spectacular track located beside the Mediterranean coast in the Spanish city is one of the big attractions of the 2008 schedule of the Formula 1 feeder series, and for Racing Engineering it has, in addition, the extra motivation of being the second race meeting of the season 'at home'. This race will be the antepenultimate one of the year and it comes with the Spanish team in a magnificent situation, leading the Drivers Championship with Giorgio Pantano and fighting for the title in the Team standings thanks also to the additional contribution given by Javier Villa's points. The excellent joint result for both drivers in the previous race in Hungary demonstrated once again the competitiveness of the Repsol and Telefónica backed Dallaras, still without a single mechanical failure during the whole season which has allowed their drivers to be usually fighting for the top positions.
In Valencia, the aim of the Spanish team and its drivers will be to focus on keeping the first position in the championship for Giorgio Pantano; with big expectations also of Javier Villa obtaining his first podium of the year and that the points added by both could allow Racing Engineering to take first place in the Team standings. To achieve this all the members of Racing Engineering have worked hard, with the two drivers even taking part in race of the Spanish GT series run a few weeks ago on the Valencia Street Circuit, in order to learn at first hand the very special characteristics of the new track. This track, in spite of its urban character, presents very different challenges from other non-permanent circuits, with points of very high speed and with at least two places where it seems more than feasible to overtake safely. This makes it a circuit where it will not be not be at all easy to find the ideal setup to be competitive on both the long straights and the combination of second and third gear turns that form a good part of its slower section. The result is that the work on Friday's Free Practice, always important, will be even more crucial this time since none of the GP2 teams has any previous reference points for the new Valencian track.
With the motivation of competing in front of its home crowd, Racing Engineering faces the second Spanish appointment in the calendar of the GP2 Series with the highest hopes and with all the members of the team convinced of the possibility of shining in a race that has a great expectation worldwide given the innovation that is the new Valencian track.