Q&A With GP2 Series Technical Director Didier Perrin
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May 15, 2007
Didier Perrin: I am more than happy as our targets with the new kit were first to improve our performance to maintain the gap with F1 which was a success (our pole man in Barcelona was less than 6 seconds from the F1 mid-grid) and secondly to force the teams to make set-up changes from 2006 in order to set all the teams on a level playing field at the beginning of the season. As we have seen four different winners from four different teams for our first four races it is clear that we have also achieved our second goal.
GP2 Series: Both Bahrain and Barcelona were very hot races with which to begin the season. Were you happy with the level of reliability we saw?
Didier: As the Technical Director of the GP2 Series, I am afraid that I am probably the most difficult person to satisfy in terms of reliability. I am happy when absolutely no reliability problems affect a race, which was the case for example in Barcelona Race 2 despite the fact that only 15 cars crossed the finish line!
Hot ambient temperatures make both the teams and drivers’ tasks more difficult as it tends to reduce the margin of error that the car is able to tolerate.
During the entire 2006 GP2 season, only 2.4 % of the cars that started a race stopped due to an engine reliability problem. People could say that the GP2 Series reached a correct level of reliability, but I don’t like this way of thinking and with our partners in the Series we constantly strive to improve our performance and reliability and we will continue to push in 2007.
GP2 Series: We’ve seen an unusually high number of aborted starts so far in 2007, both in Bahrain and Spain. Can you explain the reasons for the grid problems?
Didier: First, consider the fact that, unlike in Formula One, GP2 Series cars are not equipped with dozens of electronic tools to help the driver at the starts, or during the races, and this makes a big difference, particularly in the start procedure.
For example, let’s try to analyse what a GP2 Series driver on one of the first grid rows can have in mind in the seconds before the start.
