GP2 Featre - Senna Eyes 2007 GP2 Drive
02/10/2006
Bruno Senna, the nephew of three-time world champion Ayrton Senna, will test a Bridgestone-shod GP2 car for the first time next week. The 23-year-old Brazilian will drive a DPR car at Paul Ricard during the first GP2 test of the winter.
“My plan is definitely to move into GP2 next year,” says Bruno, who has contested the British Formula 3 Championship for the last two years and finished third this year.
“I will test for DPR first, but I also have plans to test for ART Grand Prix and Isport International. These are the three best teams in GP2 and after I’ve driven for each of them I’ll decide which team I’ll race for next year.”
Like every ambitious young driver, Bruno hopes that GP2 will be the last step on his ladder to Formula 1. But his learning curve will be steep because, despite being exposed to racing early in his life through Ayrton, he still has very little experience behind the wheel.
“When I was very young,” says Bruno, “I used to drive go karts at our farm in Brazil. During the winter months, when Ayrton was on holiday, he used to join me and we had a lot of fun racing together. I would be quicker than him down the straights because I was much lighter than him, and he would catch up in the corners.
“But when he died, I didn’t raise the subject of racing again. It was a very difficult time for everyone in the family, and for the next 10 years I didn’t go near a kart.”
The racing bug began to bite again in 2002, when he graduated from Sao Paulo University, where he’d read Business Administration. He persuaded his mother Viviane, Ayrton’s sister, to let him race, but he was too old to take a conventional route up the racing ladder.
He had to progress fast, so he jumped straight into British F3, where he learnt the ropes out of the spotlight.
“Formula 3 cars are great to drive,” he says. “They are a lot of fun and I have learnt a lot in them, particularly because we get so much testing in the British Championship. But I now feel that I am ready to graduate to the next level, and that’s GP2.”
Earlier this year, when Bruno won the opening rounds of the British F3 Championship at Oulton Park, there was speculation surrounding him jumping straight into F1 in 2007. But Gerhard Berger, Ayrton’s former teammate who is now a mentor to Bruno, has advised him not to rush.
“I see a lot in Bruno that reminds me of Ayrton,” says Berger. “They look the same. While people will welcome the Senna name back into F1, he will only get one chance and he needs to be fully ready for that opportunity. He doesn’t have enough experience at the moment, so he must do GP2 to learn more about driving and to learn the F1 tracks.”
Then, in 2008 or 2009, depending on his progress in F1’s most prestigious feeder category, the Senna name could be back in F1. And the whole of Brazil will once again go wild.