As he reflects back over a successful season that saw his Racing Engineering outfit rack up three victories and clinch sixth spot in the teams’ championship, Crash.net columnist Alfonso de Orleans-Borbon speaks enthusiastically about his hopes for 2008 – and the man he believes could just be the next Fernando Alonso…
Spaniards seem to like the Hungaroring – Borja Garcia had his best performance with us at the track and
Fernando Alonso won his first
Formula 1 race there, so for some reason it suits the Spaniards and Javier Villa felt comfortable and got into it immediately. He also arrived there having won at the Nürburgring a fortnight previously, so he was pretty buoyed up.
It’s particularly important to qualify well in Hungary because it’s so difficult to overtake. I think the one track where qualifying is the most crucial is Monaco, but after that it’s probably Hungary and then I would say Valencia. It is important to be up there, and Javi qualified quite well which allowed him to then run well and finish inside the points on the Saturday. That subsequently put him in a position to be able to win the race on the Sunday.
It was funny; it was the only time all season Javi came away from the weekend feeling really satisfied and feeling everything had gone fantastically. He’s a person who is not easily satisfied – he’s always trying to better himself, the team and everyone around him – so he’s one of these guys who always wants to win, and that was the first weekend where we saw him completely relaxed. Even though he had already won at both Magny-Cours and the Nürburgring, that was the first one where he truly thought ‘ok, I’m there’, which obviously made us very pleased.
![Alfonso de Orleans Borbon - Racing Engineering [pic credit: GP2 media]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/163611.jpg)
