www.forsytheracing.com
Assen, Holland—Sunday, September 2, 2007—European fans flocked to the TT Assen Circuit by the thousands today as Forsythe Championship Racing and the Champ Car World Series completed the inaugural Bavaria Champ Car Grand Prix under beautiful sunny skies. Forsythe’s drivers had mixed results at the 2.830-mile permanent road course with Oriol Servia climbing from his 13th starting position to finish eight, and Paul Tracy retiring with mechanical problems.
In a track where passing is extremely difficult, Servia and the #7 crew were able to pick up positions in the pits by performing quick stops and saving more fuel on the track while running at the same pace as the rest of the field. The Spaniard also managed to turn the 4th quickest lap of the race with a time of 1m21.275s. This marks Servia’s tenth top-10 result out of eleven starts in the 2007 season.
Tracy started the race from the back of the grid after sitting out for most of the qualifying session with a broken suspension. As soon as the green flag dropped, the 2003 Champion was on the charge passing almost half the field before the fourth turn only to loose ground just as quickly when he avoided colliding with Robert Doornbos which had closed the door on him and spun into the gravel. He continued but only a few laps later was forced to retire with a gearbox problem.
Oriol Servia
#7 Indeck Cosworth/Bridgestone/DP01
Finished Eight
Sixth in Championship with 204 Points
“We did a great race and came out with a very average result. It was a great effort by the whole team. It is a track that I love from the driving point of view, but we just couldn’t get the rear end behind us, it would go loose in all the corners and here you loose a lot of time because of that. Finally we got it right for the race which was great, we got the 4th fastest lap and still managed to save a lot of fuel. I think we could have done a lot better but we lost two positions when I pressed the Cosworth Power to Pass button and for some reason the pit speed limiter came on so we ended up loosing positions instead of gaining. But anyway I’m happy that we improved the cars and that we worked well.”
Paul Tracy
#3 Indeck Cosworth/Bridgestone/DP01
Finished 17th
12th in Championship with 137 Points
“I guess that was a fitting end to a very bad weekend. The bad luck we’ve had all year came with us to Europe. I made a great start, I think I passed almost ten cars on the first couple of corners. I went inside to pass (Robert) Doornbos and he just closed the door on me and I had to slam on the brakes to avoid him, the rear end came around and I spun into the gravel and got stuck. So after that we were just running around a lap down until something happened with the gearbox and our day was over.
We didn’t have a good result but overall I think these European events were a huge success for Champ Car, it’s a great feeling going around the track and seeing all the grandstands absolutely packed.”
Forsythe Championship Racing and the Champ Car World Series will now head down under for the Lexmark Indy 300 which will take place October 19 – 21 in Surfers Pradise, Australia. Tune in to Race Director, available through the Champ Car website, for live coverage of the race and many practice and qualifying sessions with multiple channels of live video, audio, timing, telemetry and commentary. Visit http://www.champcar.ws and www.forsythe-racing.com for more information.