Category: GP2 / F3000

GP2 and F3000

Weekend Preview: 9-10 May 2009

Feature Events

FIA Formula One World Championship

– Formula 1 Gran Premio de España Telefonica 2009
– Circuit de Catalunya
– Montmelo, Catalonia, Spain
– (5/17)
– www.formula1.com
– Track Map

The teams have their luxurious motorhomes (palaces?) back, races are at their usual times again, and people actually will actually be on site watching with their eyes – Formula 1 is back in Europe!

Questions to be asked this weekend:

Which teams will choose to run KERS this week? Which teams will have added a new diffuser? Will the crazy-looking wings actually generate passing at what is usually one of the most boring races of the year? This place will be a true test of the new regulations.
Find out on Sunday!

TV Guide:

UK – LIVE on BBC One at 12:10pm with the usual suite of options appearing on the Red Button when the race starts at 1pm.
Qualifying is LIVE on BBC One at 12:10pm Saturday.

US – LIVE on SPEED at 7:30am ET
Qualifying is LIVE on SPEED at 8am Saturday.

Support races: GP2 Series, FBMW Europe, Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup.
The schedule is here and you can convert to your time zone on the sidebar.

You can listen to a short preview of the event here to get up to speed on the current news.

Other Events

IRL IndyCar Series

– Pole Day for the Indy 500
– Indianapolis Motor Speedway
– Speedway, Indiana, USA
– www.indycar.com

Indy’s long qualifying process starts with the big one, qualifying for the top 11 spots including the pole position! The draw for the qualifying order takes place on Friday night with the first car in line due to start the four-lap average from 12pm ET (I believe?).

After the 11th run the ‘bumping’ begins – the field is limited to 11 positions and the slowest gets knocked out on each faster run.

Repeat for positions 12-22 on Sunday and positions 23-33 next Saturday. Yes, this means if you are quick Sunday but not Saturday you might qualify in 12th with a faster time than the guy in 11th…

Finally, next Sunday is the last chance qualifying of Bump Day when whole field is opened up again and the slowest car regardless of position is bumped off the list.

There is copious TV coverage in the US but I’d imagine this one is best followed online using the radio, live timing and all of your Twitter friends!

TV Guide:

US – Versus has a huge level of coverage from 12:00pm to 6:30pm EDT on Saturday and Sunday with the same again for next week’s sessions.

UK and elsewhere – www.indycar.com live streaming video with live timing (go to the main page and check the options)

NASCAR Sprint Cup

– Southern 500
– Darlington Speedway
– Darlington, USA
– (11/36)
– www.nascar.com

This is another Saturday night race.

TV Guide:

UK – LIVE on Sky Sports 2 at 12.00am Saturday night / Sunday morning, repeated on three times across Sky Sports during Sunday.

US – LIVE on FOX at 7pm ET Saturday

Support races: Nationwide Series (Friday)

Le Mans Series

– 1000km of Spa
– Spa-Franchorchamps
– Francorchamps, Belgium
– (2/5)
– www.lemans-series.com

Peugeot rejoin the series in the final European sportscar race before the 24 Hours of Le Mans next month. They’ll be up against the Lola Aston Martins and the Kolles Audis.

The GT2 battle will be as fraught as ever as well!

TV Guide:

UK – Updates on Eurosport at 11:45am (30 mins) and 5pm (1 hr). Pretty shoddy for a six hour race I must say.

Support races: Radical European Masters, Classic Endurance Racing, Formula Le Mans, British GT

GP2 Series

– Circuit de Catalunya
– Montmelo, Catalonia, Spain
– (1/10)
– www.gp2series.com

F1’s feeder series proper gets going after the diversion of the Asia Series. I have to say I need to do some reading up on who is doing what, and which drivers have been promoted from junior categories, because I’m a little bit behind on my GP2 news! Should be fun though.

TV Guide:

UK – Feature race doesn’t seem to be live on Saturday at all, we have to wait until 8am Sunday to watch it on Setanta Sports 1 followed directly by live coverage of the Sprint race.

This is a major step down in coverage compared to what we have been used to – we have had live coverage of the this or its predecessor F3000 for well over a decade, perhaps nearer two decades. This is not good news.

World Superbikes
– Monza, Italy

Don’t follow it so I don’t know…

* * *
Please note there will be no dedicated F1 Preview for the Spanish Grand Prix as regrettably I do not have time to write one. I have a lot of exam and project work to do so the blog will remain quiet for the next couple of weeks – but I will still be updating my Twitter account!

Lots of news

Sorry for the short quiet period there – I had a great weekend of Wii, much beer and an engagement party (not mine!). Unfortunately that wiped out the last couple of nights as I had to do my college work then instead of in a block at the weekend.

A lot has happened in the six days since I last posted, it seems as though the racing world has just suddenly realised there’s a season upon us in six or eight weeks.

Here are some snapshots:

F1
– Someone seems to be actually working on an American Formula 1 team. The idea has come and gone over the last couple of decades but nobody has really tried it since Penske in the 70s, and his cars were based an hour from me in Poole, England. Rumours suggest this ‘USF1’ team will be based in Charlotte, North Carolina with an operating base in Bilbao, Spain. I’m taking this with a pinch of salt until further notice. I didn’t believe the Prodrive F1 entry until very late on and I won’t with these guys, and that’s down to a) their choice of splitting across two continents, b) the fact no bona fide indie has entered since who knows when (not counting Aguri), and c) uh, hello, recession? What is in their favour is the new agreements about ‘cheap’ engines and drivetrains.

– FOTA and the FIA have agreed to engines costing no more than 5 million Euros and a drivetrain (gearbox etc) 1.5 million Euros. They also agreed that any team may choose to use the control Cosworth/Xtrac option currently in development – you might remember Mad Max originally intended every team to use it. Discussions continue this week.

– The Singapore GP organisers plan to adjust the layout of the circuit for this year. The pitlane entry and exit will be moved away from the racing line, turn one will be tightened to create a harder braking area, and other turns will be reprofiled.

– The great Teddy Mayer has died aged 73. Mayer was the man in control of McLaren between the death of Bruce McLaren in 1970 (he helped Bruce found the team) until Ron Dennis bought his way in in 1982. McLaren were active in F1, CanAm and USAC/CART and won the Indy 500 with Johnny Rutherford. After McLaren, Mayer moved back to America where he set up a team in CART, hiring Tom Sneva who nearly won the title with them. After a stint with Beatrice back in F1, Mayer joined Penske where he remained until his retirement in 2007. His son Tim is the COO of the American Le Mans Series and IMSA.
Please read this obituary at Motorsport.com, with thanks to No Fenders for pointing it out.

IRL
– Multiple reports had Robert Doornbos signing with Newman Haas Lanigan, however his own site denied this – for the time being. Reading between the lines it seems they are still discussing the finer points of the contract.

– Yet more reports, originating from Robin Miller I think, have Milka Duno also joining N/H/L…. which will be interesting. It seems an odd choice to me and I wouldn’t have put that team down as a ridebuying team, so I guess times really are hard.

– Five car manufacturers were unveiled as being in discussion with the IRL about future engine regulations. These were Honda, Audi, VW, Porsche and Fiat. Obviously 3 of those are actually under the same ownership now. The Fiat link is interesting, originally it was supposed to be their Alfa Romeo brand but perhaps with the recent Chrysler tie-in they may feel Fiat is the better marketing platform.

GP2
– Bruno Senna confirmed to Autosport.com that he will not be returning to GP2. The GP2 driver market has been hanging on his decision, expecting that with the Honda F1 team now defunct he would return for another year. Bruno seems to think he has a shot either at Toro Rosso, or is pinning his hopes on someone buying the ex-Honda team outright. I think he made the wrong choice – unless F1’s 3-car rule comes into effect in which case he’ll look very smart indeed. Or just lucky.

– Ocean Racing (formerly BCN) has signed Karun Chandhok for the 2009 main series.

Sportscars
– The ACO has received 82 applications for this year’s Le Mans 24 Hours. There are only 55 spots. 15 places have already been allocated through invitations based on results at the 2008 Le Mans, Petit Le Mans and the championships of the LMS and ALMS. This leaves 67 entries for 40 places. The ACO will select 55 entrants and 8 reserves and announce them at the end of this month. I’m tempted to do a little blog post about that when it happens.

Loads more has happened but it’s half past midnight and I want to go to bed!

**
Back tomorrow with Weekend Preview – although I think the Bud Shootout is the only thing on.

By the way, I don’t know who of you is from Bristowe, Virginia and keeps visiting every two hours but please stop, you’re fucking up my Feedjit stats. Just once (or twice) a day will be fine. Ta. You’re probably a bot.

News Round-Up

I hope everyone had a good New Year! I had a quiet one after spending the last two years in central London, and the previous one in Edinburgh (the Home of Hogmanay and the best New Year’s Eve street party in the world!). This year I just played a bit of Mario Kart Wii before heading into the middle of the little town I live in for the moment itself.

I thought I should catch up on some of the smaller bits of news I missed when I was revising for an exam in December, believe it or not when you summarise it a lot did actually happen even if it seemed very quiet day-to-day. And not all of it was bad, either. I’ll skip the things reported by my blogging colleagues at the time, I mean we’ve all seen that, right?

F1
– Big news in sponsorship as Vodafone takes their primary sponsorship from McLaren to Ferrari for 2009 onwards.

– Allianz will continue with WilliamsF1 for the forthcoming year, however technical partner Lenovo have instead joined McLaren. No word on the plans of RBS after the bank was bailed out by the British government a few months ago, my fellow taxpayers and I now own 60% of the company.

– Teams have been testing the KERS system and new aero package, to varying degrees. BMW, Honda and Williams were among the first to test the new gear, while Red Bull has been running with ’08 systems simulating ’09 rules.

IRL
– 2008 GP2 champ Giorgio Pantano is looking for a ride in the US after the F1 teams showed no interest in him.

– Penske continue to state that an announcement on Helio’s ride – i.e. will he drive or will there be a replacement – will be made ‘in the next few weeks’, although they’ve been saying that since November.

GP2
– Pastor Maldonado has signed with ART Grand Prix for the ’09 European series. His teammate is expected to be Nico Hulkenberg.

– The Asia series is continuing with what is becoming a regularly revolving cast of characters. Seems several teams are using it as an extended driver test for the main series.

– The February round of the Asia series at Dubai has been moved to Qatar, and will become a night event under the floodlights. MotoGP race under the lights there last year.

F2
– At least 20 drivers have been signed up to the revived F2 series for this year and it looks to be oversubscribed, in which case it will be capped at 24 drivers. So far 10 drivers have been officially announced by MSV and more are being added to this page every week, presumably in order to get more PR from staggered announcements which is a good move.

– Great to see Red Bull joining the party and helping legitimise the series further, alongside MotorSport Vision and WilliamsF1.

F3
– Carlin Motorsport have switched from Mercedes engines to Volkswagen, marking a big increase in VW’s presence in both the Euroseries and the British one. Carlin say they are following their backers Red Bull, who announced in November that all teams they are backing in F3 will run with VW.

– VW already confirmed they are dropping RC Motorsport, and will continue with Signature-Plus (both for the Euroseries), while in Britain they’ll join with T-Sport.

Sportscars
– The Le Mans pre-event Test Day has been cancelled to reduce the costs for both competitors and organisers. Wednesday’s qualifying has now become a mandatory practice session.

– Leo Mansell and dad Nigel tested the Ginetta-Zytek 07S LMP sportscar at Valencia. Meanwhile Leo’s brother Greg tested the World Series by Renault FR3.5 car in a group test at Paul Ricard, back in November.

– Barwell Motorsport will not going back to ALMS this year with their bio Aston Martin. They will instead enter the LMS and FIA GT3. I’m not sure if they’ll use that car but they will run Astons.

– BMW have been testing their GT2 class M3 in the US with World Touring Car drivers Andy Priaulx, Jorg Muller and Augusto Farfus. Priaulx says he’d like to take part in some ALMS races in the car, but Sebring clashes with a WTCC event at Puebla. Joey Hand and Bill Auberlen have been announced as the drivers of Rahal Letterman Racing’s M3.

– The Britcar 24 Hours at Silverstone has been reduced to a 6-hour event for 2009 for cost containment reasons. Organisers hope to return the race to the full distance in 2010. It has only been running since 2005.

– Ex-Super Aguri driver Anthony Davidson tested a Peugeot 908 HDi at Paul Ricard and is the running for a race drive. Go Ant!

Other
– Both Subaru and Suzuki have pulled out of the World Rally Championship. Kawasaki looks set to announce a pull-out from MotoGP next week. Seems like the Japanese car and bike makers are in trouble.

– 1998 and 1999 F1 World Champion Mika Hakkinen has become a driver manager, alongside his own manager Dider Coton.

– A1GP has agreed with the Chinese government to run two rounds per season for the next five years. Venues were not confirmed. A1 has raced in Shanghai, Beijing, Zhuhai and Chengdu since the series started in 2005.

– Organisers of the Surfers Paradise street race are building a pit/paddock complex for 40 teams in time for the ’09 event. That should be enough to service all of the A1GP and V8 Supercar teams.

– The Dakar Rally gets under way this week, but in Argentina. The African event was cancelled last year due to terrorist theats which prompted the move over the Atlantic, however a rival series called Africa Race has been set up and will be running at the same time albeit with far fewer numbers competing.

Blog
– Check out the Last.FM radio player in the white sidebar!

– The blog might be quieter than intended between now and June as I am in my final year of an accountancy course. It isn’t quite ‘Accountant’ level, its the level just below it, but that doesn’t make it easy! So I’ll be quite busy doing that.

– It’s New Year’s Day, I didn’t drink stupendous amounts last night yet my head still hurts because I have a cold, only a mild one but I HATE colds. Especially ones I pick up during a stock-take at work on NYE. I need a good rant so might come back soon to tell you all my pet peeves.

All stories shamelessely pilfered from the pages of the last several editions of Autosport magazine and reworded by me.

GP2 Top Ten 2008

For the final instalment in my trilogy of Top Tens of 2008, I’m going to take a brief look at the GP2 Series. Since 2005, GP2 has positioned itself as the official finishing school of F1, despite not having official links with the FIA itself, and being more closely aligned with the commercial arm of F1, the FOM/FOA group operated by a Mr B C Ecclestone. It is the replacement for the then-ailing F3000 International Series which seemed to end up sending most of its drivers to America instead of F1. There’s nothing wrong with racing in America, but this is perhaps not what the official F1 feeder series should be doing. Fans of the IRL might liken it to the Lights frontrunners going off to race in Formula Nippon.

Before we continue let me point you in the direction of the Too Much Racing Sidebar. If you scroll down to the white section you’ll notice a new Last.FM box has appeared above the one that was already there. What does this mean? You can now play my personal radio station! If you’ve ever wondered what crap I listen to when I write this stuff, now you can find out. That’s right, any music I’ve played via Winamp has been noted in Last.FM and is now available to you. Just hit Play and continue reading.
Remember if you navigate away (to write a comment, or visit another blog) it’ll stop playing, so you might want to hit the little icon on the bottom right of the red area to pop-out the player. I highly recommend Last.FM to anyone who listens to music through their computer.

2008 GP2 Series
For the avoidance of doubt I am only considering the main GP2 Series which raced in Europe, starting in Barcelona and ending in Monza. The Asia Series hasn’t been considered.

1. Lucas di Grassi (P3 – Barwa Campos Team)
After finishing the 2007 GP2 season runner-up in points, Lucas spent the winter alongside Nelson Piquet Jr sharing the double-duty of testing the Renault F1 car and doing development work on the new generation GP2 car/engine combo. When the F1 drive went to Nelson and the test role was reduced by the F1 regulations, Lucas found himself without much work. So in June he jumped in to the Barwa Campos Team to replace the underperforming rookie Ben Hanley, and after missing the first three weekends (i.e. six races) goes on to out-score everyone else in the remaining 7 weekends of the season to wind up 3rd in points, just narrowly beaten to 2nd by Bruno Senna and ahead of the highly-rated Romain Grosjean.
Okay so he tested the new car before anyone else, but since then everyone but him had run six races and most of the field had also done the inaugural Asia Series so you’ve got to say they’d caught up by then.
I reckon that’s pretty impressive.

2. Giorgio Pantano (P1 Champion – Racing Engineering)
Pantano had a good season, taking the previously unfancied Racing Engineering team and transforming them in to race-winners – just as he did with Campos the previous year and FMS the year before that. Giorgio seems to have decided that if nobody will take him in F1 or IndyCar, he’ll prove himself by becoming a good development driver as well as a fast racing driver. Okay so his chance in F1 has been and gone which is a shame (2004 feels like an age ago), but what chance an IndyCar ride in 2009? He can’t stay in GP2 yet again, that’s for sure. Perhaps he’ll work on improving the fortunes of A1GP Team Italy, or worse, some team in Superleague Formula. At least the guy with most Feature race wins won the title, as it should be.

3. Bruno Senna (P2 – iSport International)
Bruno had some excellent drives this year, but is still prone to silly mistakes and misjudgements. It won’t take long to knock those out of his system, but didn’t people say that this time a year ago? He’s definitely still improving yet somehow this still feels like a year of unfulfilled promises. If he doesn’t dominate in 2009 I’ll be very surprised.

4. Romain Grosjean (P4 – ART Grand Prix)
Romain was expected to walk this year’s title after his performances in F3 last year and GP2 Asia over the winter break. As it turned out, his ART car was a lot more ‘pointier’ than the opposition and this was something he seemed to struggle with, perhaps his style not suited to those characteristics. The rest of the grid’s cars seemed more docile, with some commentators suggesting this was the key to ART’s dominance in the early years of GP2. With a change of teams on the cards he’ll be good next year. Very good.

5. Pastor Maldonado (P5 – Piquet Sports)
The latest stupidly-quick-but-prone-to-crashing Venezuelan to come off the conveyor belt came on leaps and bounds this year. Last year he and Viso were pretty close, with Viso more consistent while Maldonado showed more long-term potential. This year Pastor demonstrated that potential to great effect with some excellent drives, but had a few too many retirements from races. Fast but erratic, and likes the old Banzai move even if it won’t work, just to show the others that he’ll do it.

6. Sebastien Buemi (P6 – Trust Team Arden)
The highly-rated Red Bull man was fair-to-middling, and perhaps a little overhyped. He was a very good A1GP driver in the Lola-Zytek, and seems to be slowly transferring those skills to GP2. It was a reasonable upper-midfield year and should be a title challenger next year. Seemed to always be around when others hit problems.

7. Jerome d’Ambrosio (P11 – DAMS)
This is a guy I didn’t rate at all going into the season. He seemed to make stupid errors early on which cost him a lot of points, but went on to impress me a lot through the year and if it wasn’t for that early form he’d be much higher in the points ranking and could easily have been 7th. Like Buemi he was one of the guys who was able to find good results when others threw them away, and was often up there on merit too, particuarly in the final rounds at Spa and Monza. One to watch with interest.

8. Vitaly Petrov (P7 – Barwa Campos Team)
Seems to have stopped making errors and has picked up some speed, but not quite there yet. He could use another year and looks like he’ll get exactly that. There’s not much more to say really.

9. Karun Chandhok (P10 – iSport International)
Karun seems to be one of those guys who always seems to be in the wrong place. He’s a fast driver and a professional one, yet seems to get involved in the pack when he maybe should be ahead of them given he’s in an iSport Dallara, one of the two top teams. This is possibly down to not getting enough out of qualifying, but he’s a good racer and runs very well when he qualifies up front. He works for it and goes for moves where others don’t. Perhaps he’s the new David Coulthard? One thing’s for sure: Vijay Mallya shouldn’t be dimissing him so readily.

10. Alvaro Parente (P8 – Super Nova Racing)
Alvaro had always struggled with a budget in every formula he’s raced in, so he knows a good fight. He impressed at the first round in Barcelona with a win in his first race and 7th in the reverse top-8 sprint race, but then seemed to drop back during the year. He’s a fast driver, a good guy, and deserves another year in GP2.

Other Surprises?
Luca Fillipi who should be in this list but fell out with ART, prompting a move to Arden, which didn’t seem to work either. He showed a huge amount of promise in 2007 and was expected to iron out the bumps this year. Didn’t happen. Shame. He needs a stellar 2009.

Mike Conway should have done better although he was with Trident..

Christian Bakkerud fell apart again with his customary back problems, ironic given his name, which is unfortunate because he was an excellent F3 driver.

What of 2009?
The backmarker BCN Competicion team has been bought by the ex-Jordan F1 driver (and now SEAT touring car driver) Tiago Monteiro and renamed as Ocean Racing Technology. With the team relocating from Spain to Portugal you can’t expect much improvement early on, but perhaps in the long-term?

We’re going to have an unmissable 2009 championship with Senna vs Maldonado vs Grosjean the main title fight, with probably Buemi and one or two others sticking their noses in with a few wins. I can’t wait!
In the meantime the ’08/’09 Asia Series is already under way with the 1st-generation cars. When I eventually get around to watching those races I may just post a little top ten as a warm-up to the main season.

In the meantime, have a great New Year, whatever you’re doing!