GP2 Feature - New Season New Car
12/02/2008
“It really looks the part,” smiles Paul Jackson, team principal of GP2 Series champions iSport International.
The object of his affections is the brand new GP2 / 08 sitting in the race bay at the team’s Norfolk base. The car which will carry the #1 sticker in 2008 is prepped and ready to run. All she needs now is her sister, who will arrive just ten days before the first test of the season.
“It’s followed all the latest F1 trends,” Paul explains. “The bargeboards, the wing mirrors on the sidepods. Dallara will have done a lot of work on those areas and made sure all their sums are right. Certainly our simulation work looks good. It’s a great looking car.”
A few miles away, Super Nova’s David Sears agrees with Jackson.
“It looks fantastic,” he says. “It’s just like an F1 car. It’s better designed, better built, better finished and looks better than the previous car. There are torsion bars and loads more things to play with. We can’t wait to get out there and run it!”
Over at his home in Switzerland, Racing Engineering team principal Alfonso de Orleans Borbon agrees with his fellow team bosses, that the GP2/08 is set to raise the bar ever higher in the GP2 Series.
“It’s very sleek,” he agrees. “It looks like a proper racing car. Not that the other one didn’t, but this one is the next step. It’s very nice, very well finished and properly balanced.
“Having the mirrors further out is fantastic in terms of safety. These cars have big rear wings, so when the mirrors are close in the drivers can’t see much. With them so far out, it makes things much safer.
“The bargeboards too are a nice upgrade. Having run it in the wind tunnel you can see that they really do their job. They’re proper F1 style bargeboards that redirect the air and keep all the junk out of the sidepods.”
With all the teams apart from Racing Engineering taking part in the GP2 Asia Series, Alfonso and his team have had slightly more time at their disposal to prepare for the start of the new season.
“I get to play a little bit more golf than normal,” he laughs. “No, really we’ve been hard at work. Not being in Asia has been a bit of an advantage for us, but not much. When we all get down to testing we’ll all be on the same level anyway.”
David Sears can’t wait to get his team testing when the first main series test kicks off on February 28.
“We’ve had a pretty busy winter what with A1 and the Asia Series, but we can’t wait to take the new car testing. We’ve got two drivers in Christian Bakkerud and Alvaro Parente who could prove to be dark horses in 2008. We’ve got quite a bit up our sleeves.”
They will all be aiming for one team in particular, though. 2007 champions iSport International.
“We can’t wait to get out there!” Jackson confirms. “We’ve done the simulations and now it’s about getting the car on track. We’ll take delivery of the second gearbox and engine on February 15th, and then the chassis arrives on the 18th. We’ve got to get that painted and put together straight away, and ship it out to Ricard for the first test."
"I think even ART said they wouldn’t be painting their car for that first test because the turnaround was so tight, but we won’t be coming home in between the tests, so we’ve got to do all that prep work before the 28th.”
The GP2 Asia Series may be keeping the attention of the world’s media, but back at GP2 bases around Europe, there’s a wealth of hard work going on behind the scenes to make sure that come February 28th, 26 brand new GP2 / 08s take to the track at Circuit Paul Ricard, for the first group test of the next generation of the GP2 Series.