After a fine 2006 season with its GT1 Aston Martin DBR9, Team Modena is to expand for the 2007 season with a two car entry into the British GT Championship alongside its Le Mans Series commitments.
The team will field a pair of Lamborghini Gallardos with backing from Lamborghini Wycombe - the business owned by team principal Graham Schultz – and could well spring a surprise with its driver line-up during the coming season…
Q:
You’ve got long-standing relationship with Lamborghini. How much are you looking forward to bringing the Gallardo into the British GT Championship?
Graham Schultz:
I’m looking forward to it immensely. For us, Lamborghini is the pinnacle of street sportscars. I’ve been involved with them for 25 years now and I can honestly say that we are probably the first major team to bring a Lamborghini race team together and go racing in a full-blown series.
Q:
The Gallardo is a GT3 car and is in build at the moment. What is the current state of play with them?
Graham Schultz:
The first car is half way through its build and we expect to get it in our own hands at the start of April. We don’t want it on the first though, we are happy to wait until the second! We’ve got a bit of work to do to it ourselves, it will be in Team Modena colours and will be a Team Modena car sponsored by Lamborghini Wycombe and I think we’ll have one or two days to work on the car before the first round on Easter weekend.
Q:
Is the development of the car in-house or is it in conjunction with Reiter Engineering, who also have a history of working with Lamborghini?
Graham Schultz:
We work closely with Hans, both Hans Reiter and Hans Mulbar working at Team Modena. We’ve also had drivers working with Hans Reiter up to five or six years ago and one of my technicians was a test driver for Hans. So we have been working together for probably nine years in one form or another.
Q:
In terms of drivers for the British programme, what do you have lined up?
Graham Schultz:
Well, as you know, we did very well last year in GT1 with our resident driver Antonio Garcia and we had David Brabham and Nelson Piquet for Le Mans. Nelson and David are off doing other things but when the dates match, we have some surprises for GT3 watchers.
Q:
So we could have some big names in the championship in your cars then?
![Lamborghini Gallardo[Pic credit: FIA GT/DPPI]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/188225.jpg)
