2007 BELGIAN GRAND PRIX PREVIEW
An Interview with Richard Connell, Race Engineer,
Car 22
Qu: Richard, how has your season been so far?
RC: SUPER AGURI F1 TEAM is currently 8th in the Constructors’
Championship and Takuma has scored four World Championship
points. The season so far has been extremely rewarding, both
for me personally and for the Team with respect to achieving
another important milestone necessary to contributing towards
achieving our goals and to move forward in the future.
Qu: We are heading straight to Spa in the morning
following the Italian Grand Prix today. How did you prepare
for this back-to-back race?
RC: Our preparation for the Belgium Grand Prix began several
months ago when we completed a pre-event test at the Spa-Francorchamps
circuit. It is not often that we get the opportunity to test
at a circuit before a race weekend, and the in-season test
in July has given us a good understanding of the most important
items for the race, namely our aerodynamic package and the
tyre compounds available to us. Before arriving at the circuit
late on Wednesday evening we will have a comprehensive plan
of attack for the weekend and will have given serious thought
to many eventualities that we may encounter across the weekend,
car set-up optimisation, circuit evolution, changeable weather
conditions and race strategy.
Qu: What are your thoughts about the modifications
that have been made to the Spa-Francorchamps circuit?
RC: I know the Spa-Francorchamps circuit extremely well having
raced saloon cars here in several 25 hour endurance races
in recent years and for me the most important factor concerning
recent changes is that they have not altered the wonderful
character of the circuit. The new pit lane facilities are
excellent and bring the Paddock up to the same standard as
many of the newer circuits we visit on the F1 Championship
circuit. The Bus Stop has been revised again; it will never
be a great corner, but is a ‘must’ to slow the
cars down considerably as they exit Blanchment at such high
speeds. It is possible that now the approach has been straightened,
there is more of a chance to overtake under braking. All in
all a very welcome return to the F1 Calendar.
Qu: How will the circuit characteristics suit the
SA07?
RC: We have numerous set-up tools available so that we can
adapt our car to the characteristics of the circuit and ensure
we get the best performance from the SA07 across the weekend.
Spa, with respect to other circuit on the F1 calendar, is
a low downforce circuit and we will run an optimised aerodynamic
set-up to reflect this. History shows that the SA07 is well
suited to these low downforce, high efficiency circuits and
the Team has given very good qualifying and race performances
in Canada and the USA where we would usually run a similar
aerodynamic package.
Qu: What can the SAF1 Team expect to achieve at the
2007 Belgian Grand Prix next weekend?
RC: Our priority is to finish the Belgium Grand Prix weekend
having maintained our 8th position in the 2007 Constructors’
Championship. We will, of course, always aim to add to our
points tally for the year, but with the highly competitive
level of our mid-field rivals and reliability of the entire
field, this is not always possible. So if we can maintain
our advantage over the teams currently behind us, which is
certainly possible, then the weekend will have been a success.
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