That brings us to 2007, and the hunt to find the third driver to win the title. There are many driver changes from 2006. The main changes involve champion team ART who lose Lewis Hamilton to the McLaren F1 team, and runner up Piquet Sports who lose 2006 championship runner up Nelson Piquet Junior who is now Renault F1 test driver.
The ART team, who have won both previous seasons, are led by Michael Ammermuller, who is part of the Red Bull driver development programme, and moves across from rivals Arden after a poor 2006 season. He is joined by Lucas di Grassi who joins ART from Durango.
Piquet Sports, now known as Minardi Piquet Sports, retain the services of Alex Negrao, and they replace F1 bound Nelson Piquet Junior with newcomer Roldan Rodriguez who drove for Minardi in Euro F3000 in 2006.
iSport enter 2007 as the championship favourites after a promising 2006 season and very impressive testing pace over the winter. Their line-up consists of former Jordan driver Timo Glock who stays with the team and he is joined by Andi Zuber, who joins from Trident, and has topped three of the last four tests, making him championship favourite.
Arden International enters 2007 with an all new driver line-up. They have recruited Bruno Senna from a successful British F3 season in 2006 and Adrian Zaugg moves up from the World Series by Renault and was a regular driver in A1GP with Team South Africa over the winter.
Giancarlo Fisichella’s team FMS have retained Jason Tahinci for 2007 and brought in former Jaguar and Williams F1 ace Antonio Pizzonia. Trident Racing have an all new to GP2 line-up of Kohei Hirate, who comes up from finishing third in the F3 Euro Series, and Pastor Maldonado who lost the World Series by Renault Championship in controversial circumstances when he was disqualified at Misano.
Racing Engraining keep young Javier Villa in the team and have signed Brazilian Sergio Jimenez from the Spanish F3 championship. The next team is Super Nova who field the British F3 champion Mike Conway, partnering Luca Fillipi who joins from BCN. Taking his place at BCN is Super Aguri reserve driver Sakon Yamamoto, making the step down after being replaced in F1 by Anthony Davidson. He is joined by the Spanish F3 Champion Ricardo Risatti.
At DPR British F3 front runner Christian Bakkerud joins Andy Soucek who is another World Series by Renault graduate to make his GP2 debut this year. The DAMS team consists of new Williams F1 tester Kazuki Nakajima and Nicolas Lapierre who ended the 2006 season in third place and helped guide AlGP team France to the 2005/06 title.
The penultimate team is Campos Racing who have signed former Jordan driver Giorgio Pantano from FMS and Vitaly Petrov who arrives from DPR. The last team is Durango who announced Borja Garcia as one of the drivers who returns to GP2 following a season in the World Series by Renault championship at the time of writing they have not named their second driver but it is strongly rumoured to be Karun Chandhok who in 2006 was winner of the first ever Asian Formula Renault V6 Championship.
After a series of winter testing events the title could go any way. ART, Minardi Piquet Sports and iSport will all be championship contenders, and anyone of the six drivers could walk away with the title. In 2005 and 2006 ART have won the titles with close competition from Arden and Piquet Sports repetitively but in 2007 they will have more competition with iSport and Andi Zuber have looking untouchable and they are my pick for the title.
Further back Arden, FMS, Trident and Racing Engineering will all be looking for race wins and in the case of Arden their impressive drivers will become more consistent be front runners in 2008.
Written by Paul Crossling on Thu, 29 Mar 2007 09:25:49
[ Print View ][ E-Mail Article ]
