KMP Racing has signed Anton Nebylitskiy to drive for the team in the 2010 World Series by Renault.
After an extremely disappointing rookie season in the Formula Renault 3.5 category, Nebylitskiy, 20, is looking to rebound in 2010 with the newly formed KMP Racing. The team recently purchased two cars from Ultimate Motorsport and has named Bruno Besson as the team manager. Watch for an additional driver to be signed in the coming weeks.
Prema Powerteam has announced that they will not enter the 2010 World Series by Renault. The team spent four years in the Formula Renault 3.5 category, but has decided to focus on its F3 programs for 2010.
Omar Julian Leal will join Nathanael Berthon in the 2010 World Series by Renault Draco line-up.
Leal, 19, signed with Draco earlier today to compete in the 2010 World Series by Renault. This will be his second season in the Formula Renault 3.5 category as he drove for Prema in 2009. His best finish last season was 3rd, at the Hungaroring, after starting 21st.
Leal has shown promise but he didn’t develop quite as quickly as I expected in 2009. It will be interesting to see how he does in 2010 under the guidance of Draco.
Nathanael Berthon (photo--www.frwec.com)
Nathanael Berthon signed with Draco Racing to compete in the 2010 World Series by Renault. Draco will look to defend the Formula Renault 3.5 title as they won the overall championship in 2009 with Bertrand Baguette behind the wheel.
Berthon has done a nice job developing his craft running in the Formula Renault 2.0 category for the past two seasons, competing in both the WEC (Western Europe Cup) and the Formula Renault Eurocup. The Frenchman made some really solid improvements this season driving for Epsilon Euskadi, most notably his top-ten performance. In 2008, he finished inside the top-ten in only 13.8% of his race starts, whereas in 2009, he finished inside the top-ten in 85.7% of his Formula Renault 2.0 starts. This season, 2009, was a bit of a break-out year for Berthon and he impressed a lot of people with his performance this fall in the World Series by Renault collective tests at both Motorland Aragon and Barcelona.
He should be a decent signing for Draco and I look forward to watching his development in 2010.
World Series by Renault- Spa 2009 (Photo:Renault-Sport.com)
There has been quite a bit of WSR news this week. Let’s start with the 3-day test at Motorland Aragon.
Testing News
The first session on Tuesday was dominated by three Formula Renault 2.0 drivers. The top-three in the first session were, ironically, the top-three from the 2009 FR2.0 NEC championship.
The Tuesday afternoon session was topped by the 2009 Formula Renault 2.0 NEC champion Antonio Felix da Costa.
On Wednesday morning there was a different group at the top. Jean E. Vergne, who finished second in the 2009 Formula Renault 2.0 Eurocup, topped the time charts. He was followed by Greg Mansell—who was also 2nd in the Tuesday afternoon test.
Jean E. Vergne and Greg Mansell returned to the top of the charts on Wednesday afternoon.
Filip Salaquarda found his way to the top in the final session. After running 3rd and 4th in his previous sessions, Jon Lancaster broke into the top-two. Keisuke Kunimoto had a solid run to find his 2nd top-three test performance.
If you want a guaranteed ride, just buy the team
ISR Racing, run by Igor Salaquarda, purchased RC Motorsports’ equipment and will run in the 2010 World Series by Renault. As noted above, Filip Salaquarda topped the final test session on Thursday—driving for RC Motorsport.
RC Motorsport will likely continue in the F3 ranks and is reportedly joining forces with Autotecnica to run a Formula BMW-Europe team in 2010.
Family owned teams is becoming a common theme in WSR competition. Fairuz Fauzy’s father, who owns the Mofaz group, took over Fortec Motorsports heading into the 2009 season. Then, Walter Grubmuller’s father purchased P1 Motorsports. It’s probably safe to say we have a partial roster in place for the above teams in 2010.
New Signings
As far as 2010 roster’s go, we now know that Red Bull drivers’ Daniel Ricciardo and Brendon Hartley will be driving for Tech 1 in 2010. It sort of goes without saying… Tech 1 should be a top-team in 2010. They won the 2007 World Series by Renault championship with Alvaro Parente behind the wheel.
F3 Euro Series
Mirko Bortolotti
Mirko Bortolotti will replace Brendon Hartley under the Carlin Motorsport tent this weekend in the Formula 3 Euro Series season-finale at Hockenheim. Hartley will instead contest the Formula Renault 3.5 (WSR) finale at the new Motorland Aragon circuit in Alcaniz, Spain.
Bortolotti won the 2008 Italian F3 championship and has spent this season in the FIA Formula Two series. The 19-year-old is backed by Red Bull. Last year, in Italian F3 competition, he finished all but one race on the podium. His podium percentage rounded out at 94% last year. This season, in Formula Two, he finished fourth in the overall championship with 5 podiums and 1 win in 14-starts.
Thus far into the weekend, he is slightly off the pace. He ended up 21st out of 24 in the first practice session and subsequently qualified for Race-1 in 17th out of 24 drivers. Fellow Carlin teammates, Victor Garcia and Jake Rosenzweig, qualified 4th and 15th–respectively.
World Series by Renault
Esteban Guerrieri
In World Series by Renault news, Esteban Guerrieri will return to the series with RC Motorsport. The 24-year-old Argentine driver ran two WSR races in 2007 with Fortec Motorsport and 12 races last season with Ultimate-Signature. During his 2008 campaign, he finished 8th in the overall championship with 1 win and 2 podiums despite missing 3 events. This year he has been competing in Superleague Formula and the TC2000 Argentina championship. I expect Guerrieri to do pretty well this weekend. He is replacing Pasquale di Sabatino, who reportedly ran out of funding.
Spaniard Bruno Mendez will also join RC Motorsport this weekend for his Formula Renault 3.5 debut. Mendez, who finished 5th in the 2008 Spanish F3 Championship, has been competing in the European F3 Open Championship in 2009. He has 3 wins and 9 podiums in 12-race starts, driving for Campos Racing. This will be a pretty big jump for Mendez, but good experience nonetheless.
As noted above, Brendon Hartley will be running Formula Renault 3.5 rather than the Formula 3 Euro Series. Hartley should have some momentum coming into this weekend after finishing a (WSR) career best-2nd at the Nurburgring last month.
Comtec Racing has signed Greg Mansell to run the World Series by Renault season-finale at Motorland Aragon in Spain this weekend. The move to Comtec has been expected for the better part of two-months now.
Mansell started out the 2009 season in the World Series by Renault driving for Ultimate-Signature. His best FR3.5 finish this season is 9th—which occured at Spa—after starting the race in 15th. Since leaving Ultimate, he has competed in an LMP1 car and the Atlantic Championship. The 21-year-old tested the Atlantic car with Genoa at Gingerman Raceway last month before making a start at Road Atlanta.
Greg hasn’t officially made any commitments for 2010, but if he chooses to stay in Europe he will likely spend another year in the Formula Renault 3.5 car.
www.grand-am.com
Salvador Duran will return to the World Series by Renault with Interwetten for the final two events of the season. The series returns to action this weekend at the Nürburgring and then wraps up the 2009 schedule with a stop at Motorland Aragon.
Duran finished 2nd in the 2003 Skip Barber National Championship, just 16 points behind current Indy Car driver Rafa Matos. Since that time, he has developed his craft in FR 2.0, British F3, A1GP (Team Mexico), GrandAm Rolex (Daytona Prototype), and FR 3.5.
The 24-year-old Mexican driver ran 15-races with Interwetten last season in the World Series by Renault. His best finish occured at Silverstone where he won the race by 13.852 seconds over Marcos Martinez.
Duran has done a nice job of diversifying his skills and should be a front runner this weekend.
photo--keisukekunimoto.com
Keisuke Kunimoto signed a two-race deal with Epsilon Euskadi for the remaining events on the 2009 World Series by Renault schedule.
The 20-year-old Japanese driver won the Macau Grand Prix last season, driving for Tom’s. He finished 2nd overall in the 2008 Japanese Formula 3-Championship Class. This season he has been competing in the Formula Nippon championship, finishing inside the top-ten in 60% of his race starts.
Keisuke will partner Chris van der Drift under the Epsilon Euskadi canopy. I think this is a pretty decent signing for the team, it will be interesting to see if Keisuke will be able to come up with the necessary funding for a full WSR campaign in 2010.
Greg Mansell has parted ways with Ultimate Racing in the World Series by Renault. It is currently being reported that he will join Comtec Racing for the final two events at the Nurburgring and Motorland Aragon. That said, there hasn’t been any official confirmation of the move to Comtec.
The motivation for the departure isn’t clear, but there is quite a bit of speculation going on among fans of the World Series by Renault.
Ultimate boss Barry Walsh said: [Continue Reading...]
