Having set the pace since winning the pole and opening race in Valencia back in April, Piquet currently finds himself in the middle of an ART Grand Prix sandwich, with Hamilton's team-mate Alex Premat now up to third place, albeit still six points behind the Brazilian, on 33. Premat is a self-confessed lover of Silverstone's flat-out sections and will be hoping to put team-mate Hamilton firmly in his place over the weekend. Despite outward appearances, the pair's relationship has been made more frosty by both the Briton's pace and Premat's move in Barcelona, and could yet set up a tasty intra-team battle.
Despite crashing heavily in qualifying and then being taken out by an errant Ferdinando Monfardini in Monaco, Ernesto Viso remains fourth overall on 26 points and, like Piquet, is returning to familiar ground after spending his F3 years in Britain. The iSport driver will want to get his Silverstone weekend off to a strong start, too, having won two sprint races but not yet featured on the top step in the higher-scoring features.
Viso will be pushed harder this weekend, following a handful of changes in the line-up, with
Timo Glock moving over from the Venezuelan's former team, BCN, to join him at iSport. The switch is the result of Tristan Gommendy missing
Silverstone, apparently with a back injury, but possibly with more long-term problems that have yet to be fully revealed. Glock's place at BCN is taken by former FMS favourite Luca Filippi, while Gommendy's fellow Frenchmen Nicolas Lapierre and Olivier Pla will be replaced by Neel Jani and debutant Mike Conway after suffering genuine injuries in Monaco. The blow is especially hard for the DPR driver, as he took his first win of 2005 at Silverstone and, after showing well early on in Monaco, would have hoped for his fortunes to continue rising in 2006.
