GP2 Feature - GP2's Silly Season
26/11/2007
It’s that time of year again. With testing at an end and the GP2 Series on relative holiday until Christmas, what else is there to do but disappear into ones own world of supposition and fantasy?
Yes, Silly Season is upon us, and as rumours abound as to the destinations of the great and the good of junior formula racing, we take a look at the likely lineups for the big teams in the 2008 GP2 Series.
iSport International: The reigning GP2 champions naturally have the pick of the bunch for 2008. While rumour says the team has an option to retain the services of Andi Zuber next year, the chances of the taking up of this clause seem slim.
The 2007 race winner Bruno Senna is the favourite to drive for the squad next season. The Brazilian tested twice for the champions over the winter and both parties are known to have been more than impressed with each other.
The big question however falls over the second seat. The hot favourite, should he be able to find the necessary budget, is Adam Carroll. The GP2 veteran is yet to find himself in a championship winning position in three years of competition, but proved once again in 2007 just how important and influential a driver he can be if handed the chance.
Should Carroll fail to raise the necessary funds, Pastor Maldonado is also hotly tipped for the second seat. His name has been raised along with that of Karun Chandhok as the most likely to step into the second seat, given that both have shown promise, won races in their debut season, and neither are short of backing.
ART Grand Prix: Following two years of total domination, ART Grand Prix will still be reeling from losing not one but both championships in 2007. The crucial factor in their loss of form was the revolving door for the second seat. Without parity the team lost one of its major strengths, and a similar mistake will not be made again.
Fred Vasseur, having taken Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton straight from the F3 EuroSeries to GP2 titles in their debut years, believes that Romain Grosjean, who drove for his ASM team in the EuroSeries in 2007, can emulate both Rosberg and Hamilton by taking the crown in his first season. While Grosjean, a product of the RDD’s appointment is yet to be confirmed, it seems simply a matter of time.
As for the second seat, that again is a bone of some contention. Rumours after the season placed Kazuki Nakajima at ART, but with the Japanese driver gaining promotion to F1 to sit alongside Rosberg at Williams, there is renewed interest and competition for the last of the big four seats.
Hot favourites at the moment are Luca Filippi, Mike Conway and Pastor Maldonado. Filippi seems to have his nose ahead at present and his experience and speed, coupled with the raw promise of Grosjean, would mark ART Grand Prix back out as championship favourites.
Campos Grand Prix: Surprisingly little has been said about Campos Grand Prix’s driver situation. Vitaly Petrov is under contract for a second season, leaving just one seat open. Of course the biggest question of all will be just how much of 2007’s successes were a direct consequence of Giorgio Pantano, and the greatest test of all for the team will be to see if they can maintain their 2007 pace without the talented Italian.
With a brand new car to contend with they will need an experienced talisman, but few expect Pantano to return.
Winter testing showed that the car maintained its pace and Campos will be aiming high for 2008 and could yet pull off a major coup by snaring the services of one of the big guns. Andi Zuber’s name has been mentioned along with a couple of former F1 boys whose services have become surplus to requirements in the big paddock reshuffle for 2008.
And what of the others? Minardi Piquet Sports, for example, may not have reached the levels of success that they were used to in 2007, but are still one of the most in-demand teams for 2008. Andi Zuber and Pastor Maldonado are two of the early favourites for the seats, but following winter testing MPS could well be the first port of call for the majority of top drivers should the top three teams fill their seats early.
It didn’t seem to matter who drove the cars, they were at the top of the timesheets throughout the winter, reassuring the team that they’d had a good car all along and that the lack of results was not born of any human error on the engineering side.
Super Nova Racing, FMS International and Trident will also be in demand, as will the Durango team, who beat their Italian rivals over the course of a season for the first time in 2007.
Only Dams has confirmed a driver for the main series, with Kamui Kobayashi taking the empty seat left by his fellow TDP driver Kazuki Nakajima. If the Japanese is half as impressive as Nakajima was in his debut year, he and Dams will be ones to watch again.
The exact permutations and rumours over the 2008 driver market are vast. For now, all one can do is wait and see where the cards fall. With the first group test of the GP2 / 08 set for February 28, 2008, there is little time for decisions to be taken. But as ART proved in 2005, the team who has their driver line-up established the earliest, will make the best use of the testing period.
Few will have forgotten that... which means the next few weeks for the driver market will be fascinating.