Bruno Senna is one of the most exciting new talents on the GP2 grid in 2007, and keen to prove there is a lot more to his success than just the family name. In his first exclusive column for Crash.net, the 23-year-old Arden star talks us through his highly promising series debut in Bahrain…
Heading into my first GP2 meeting in Bahrain I wanted to be inside the top ten over the course of the weekend. I thought I was going to struggle a little bit in qualifying because of only having half an hour to set up the car, but in the end the car felt pretty good and we managed to get it working well for the track conditions. The communication and work we did together was very good.
Unfortunately I didn’t manage to get everything out of the car during the session. After the first sector I was trying to be careful not to spoil the lap because it was already pretty good, but I was a little too careful in one of the corners, braked a bit too early and lost a lot of time. It was a good, strong start though, and being so close to pole position in terms of time was excellent.
In the races I was looking forward to just finishing, but my pace was good. The first two laps were a bit complicated. I had never driven the car with such a heavy fuel load before, and it was hard to keep my rhythm up all the way to the end. In the closing laps of the first race I began to struggle with the grip too, but for my first weekend to be just one place off the podium was pretty good, and I felt ok at the end and didn’t faint!
In the second race I unfortunately got caught up in Andreas Zuber’s opening lap accident. He pulled his car towards me and I had nowhere to go so had to move to the inside. When Zuber hit Lucas di Grassi, Lucas spun and that damaged my front suspension. Without that the race would have been a lot more straightforward, but these things happen.
