With half-point of the season passed, Formula SimRacing will celebrate round 10 with a new sponsor signing in form of GT Omega Racing and by providing the brand new Silverstone layout to race on in the upcoming weekend. Read the pre-race report to find out the favourites for Sunday and all the background facts to be prepared for the 52-lap show on MultiBC, culminating into the AutoGP World Championship race from Sunday 17:10 GMT onwards.
 

Track facts:

Length: 5.89km
Race distance: 52 laps / 306.28km
Direction: clockwise
Number of corners: 17 (left: 8, right: 9)
Longest straight: 890m
Full throttle: 64%
Tyre wear: High
Engine wear: Medium
Downforce: Medium
Lap record: Dennis Hirrle 1:13.288 (2005)

Previous winners:

2009 Roy Kolbe
2008 Stefan Kanitz
2007 David Greco
2006 Roy Kolbe
2005 Dennis Hirrle
2004 Joshua Lyon
2003 Dominik Binz
2002 Artur Mlodzinski
2001 Jari Montonen



History

Having the status of a true classic in the Formula SimRacing calendar, Silverstone Circuit provides a unique challenge of fast, demanding corners, interconnected with long straights built on former airport runways, making the circuit one of the fastest in the calendar. With the modifications for 2010, the high-speed character of the circuit is highlighted even more and the track certainly has the ingreidients to provide another unforgettable show.

Being an annual appearance in the FSR calandar ever since the league founding, Silverstone has seen a couple of surprise victories along the way, amongst those the win of Jari Montonen in 2001, which remained the Finn's only one in the season, but was enough to promote him to vice champion of 2001 behind the well-known Artur Mlodzinski. Dennis Hirrle stopped the clocks four years later to a lap record of 1:13,288, which no doubt will remain untouchable due to the track  modifications.

The recent years have seen races of various excitement. In 2006 and 2009 the excitement factor was somewhat brought down by the superiour pace of Roy Kolbe, whereas 2007 provided a tight battle between Bruno Marques and David Greco, which the Italian eventually won. The 2008 race saw a similar fight between Bruno Marques and Stefan Kanitz, whose win was arguably the biggest surprise victory seen in the recent years.

 

Analysis


Half-season point passed and after a few stop-and-go tracks we are back to a truly flowing track with plenty of challenges, including new changes for 2010. How has the newbuilt track appeared to the drivers?

Indeed, the track has changed a lot, and generally speaking rebuilding the old classics hasn't been a success story. But clearly Silverstone makes the exception, as the new section adds probably the most difficult corner of the whole track, the rebuilt fast right-left Abbey, followed by a couple of interesting although not very flowing slow corners. Overall the high-speed characteristics are still very much preserved, highlighted by sector one which is still the most exciting part of the track. But overall, the general consensus in the paddock regarding the changes is positive.


Precision Motorsports has been dominant in the last couple of races, which we saw especially at Valencia. Are we now approaching some threshold in the championship where we can start to speak about "critical races"?

I guess one could say so. Bono Huis has driven on a stunning level in the last four races, scoring only first and second places. The following two races before the summer brake will be good indicators of whether this trend has changed or not. Silverstone is not the best place for Huis to demonstrate his slow-speed brilliance and control of understeer, which should leave some room for Twister-Racing to attack back. At this point of the season consistency will also be highlighted; a retirement could cost vital points in the fight for a top 3 position and the AutoGP prize.


Greco and Marques have driven two races together now with somewhat modest success, on their scale. Are the best races still ahead for the "veterans"?

I believe so, although it has to be said that the issue probably lies more in the mod characteristics than in the drivers. The lowered downforce level, along with tyre modifications has made the cars prone to understeer in turn-in, which offers a very limited setup corridor for drivers who prefer their car to act aggressive on entry. Amongst those drivers could be mentioned David Greco, Blair Disley, Lee Morris, Jaakko Mikkonen, John-Eric Saxén and Patrick De Wit, who we have seen consistently performing on a higher level in earlier seasons. As opposite, drivers with a very calculated entry and corner approach, amongst those Rasmus Tali, Ronny Hähnel and Bono Huis, have clearly got more out of their cars this year.


Let's speculate about Sunday's race then. Silverstone has seen surprise winners before and the notorious hot lap list shows some interesting names on top, can we draw any conclusions from that for qualifying?

As well known Precision and Twister have apparently banned their drivers from racing on the public server, but based on the impressive times, I would not be too surprised to see the orange colors come out strongest, not only in football.  Having said that, the race will be a whole different story again. The prominent high-speed character puts extra high demands on the race setup and tyres, so boringly I have to predict the race again to be decided between the blue and white cars.


At Europe you predicted all top 10 names correctly but in the wrong order. What will Sunday's row look like?


1. Bruno Marques
2. Bono Huis
3. Fredrik Nilsson
4. Mikko Puumalainen
5. Rasmus Tali
6. David Greco
7. Mathieu Prevot
8. Jaakko Mikkonen

Extra row: Karol Poniatowski, Dennis Hirrle



–JES –