preview: Barcelona.

Thursday, 26th October 2006

Sixteen races down, seven different winners with a whole lot of controversy in between, the World Series by Renault 2006 comes to a close at Barcelona, Spain, the country of its spiritual home.

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Furthermore, Soucek will be aided by a new team-mate after the out of form Eric Salignon was ditched in favour of GP2 driver Franck Perera. The Frenchman has been drafted in to help Soucek to the drivers’ title but also to aid Interwetten.com’s hopes in the team standings, a championship they lead from Draco Multiracing USA by seven points.

Indeed, the late signing of Milos Pavlovic from Eurointernational has given Draco a late chance to flourish, although it is Maldonado who they will be focusing all of their efforts on.

By right Maldonado should be celebrating title glory by now. With four wins under his belt, as well as five pole positions, the Venezuelan has been the most prolific of the title contenders this season. However, he has also proved the most inconsistent, suffering five crucial retirements, not to mention a devastating disqualification from victory at Misano.

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Nonetheless, victory at Le Mans has given Maldonado a new lease and leaves him sitting just three points adrift of Soucek in the standings and threatening to complete what he should already have finished.

Still, despite being a few points off the leading duo, the ever-changing state of the World Series means even the most unlikely can still be considered – just ask Danielsson. Before the Nurburgring round of the season, Danielsson was seemingly fighting in the lower reaches of the top ten standings, following a raft of bad luck that has numbed the undoubted speed from his Comtec car.

However, it seemed to be coming good when he managed his first ever podium at the Nurburgring, before he followed it up with his maiden win at Donington Park. Better than that, Danielsson went on to make it a double and then scored the first race victory at Le Mans.

Those three wins have catapulted Danielsson into the reckoning at a very late stage and were it not for contact in the second race at Le Mans that led to him falling out of contention, the Swede could very well have been going into the final round as the championship leader.