For the 4th time this year Neel Jani was able tohave a top 5 finish, and like all the previous times this season,Neel ran in a podium position for the majority of the race.
For the Spanish Racing Engineering squad, the French round ofthe GP2 Series was another step in consolidating the team’sposition as one of the strongest teams in the championship.Keeping in mind that most of the tracks are new to the team, asteep learning curve has been achieved so far. Since thebeginning of the season there been a constant improvement inRacing Engineering’s cars - allowing the driversto rely on an increasingly competitive car.
Jani's 4th place is another confirmation of the Spanish team’s focused path on improvement. On this occasion, only the fast Renault driverKovalainen, stopped Neel from making it to the podium. Aninteresting detail seems to be the fact that in practically all of theSunday races, Neel Jani and Racing Engineering have beenrunning in either 1st, 2nd or 3rd position at some point during therace. Currently Neel is 7th in the drivers’ championshipstandings.
As predicted before the race, Borja Garcia’s 20th position on thegrid didn’t leave him many options to shine during the sprintrace. Magny Cours is a racetrack where overtaking maneuversare complicated and the cars’ increasing reliability doesn’t leavemany possibilities for drivers starting from the back of the grid togain positions. Borja is currently in a position which is notaccording to his abilities as a driver. He also seems to beattracting all the technical problems the team has had to face.We hope that this situation changes quickly and allows theyoung Spaniard to obtain the positions corresponding to histalent and speed.
After finishing the race in 12th position, Borja Garciacommented, “I am not at all happy with this weekend. I sufferedfrom problems during the Friday session and faced a technicalproblem yesterday that forced me to abandon the race. Theresult was a bad starting position for today’s sprint race.Starting 20th doesn’t allow a driver to make up many positionson this track where overtaking is rather difficult. I also wasn’t toocontent with the set up of my car, but hope that in Silverstoneeverything finally goes well”.
Neel Jani, scoring points in both races this weekend, said, “Ihad a good start, although critical, when I was pushed onto thegrass by Piccione and thus lost a position to Yoshimoto, who Ihad already passed. In the early stages of the race I could keepup with Yoshimoto’s pace, but Rosberg was incredibly fasttoday. Comparing our performance with yesterday we madeanother step forward, but 3rd position was not defendable. Soonce more I finished close, but not on the podium. Now wehave to continue our path in improving the car and makeanother step forward for the Silverstone weekend. But ingeneral this weekend was good as we made improvements andscored good points”.
Alfonso de Orleáns-Borbón at the end of this race weekendannounced,
“Both drivers did a good job today and it was hardfor Borja to get a good result when starting from 20th on the grid.He did all he possibly could on a track where overtaking is verydifficult.
I hope that we will finally overcome the bad luck and sohe can show what he is really capable of at Silverstone. As forNeel, he also did all that was possible today. We have to admitthat Arden and ART are a step ahead of everyone else in thefield and in respect to this we are certainly among the best ofthe rest. But knowing our history, we are not settling for that andwill continue to work hard in trying to improve our cars all wecan.
Neel, however, was fantastic over the entire weekend andhis races showed that we are on the right path as he achievedan unthreatened 4th position. But there is no doubt about thefact that Borja needs to start scoring points like his teammate.This should also convince people outside of Spain that he is anexcellent driver. We as a team will continue to work hard so asto supply him with everything that is necessary, but sadly noteverything is within our hands”.
