Racing Engineering to run four drivers at the Barcelona post-season test next week

25/10/12 Racing Engineering to run four drivers at the Barcelona post-season test next week.

Just five weeks after the last race of the 2012 GP2 Series all the teams are back in action in Barcelona ....

Just five weeks after the last race of the 2012 GP2 Series all the teams are back in action in Barcelona for the first of the two annual post-season tests.

Racing Engineering will be giving four drivers the opportunity to drive their cars on the 4.655 km Spanish circuit that is a traditional venue for out of season testing. On Tuesday the 30th of October the Brazilian André Negrão and Canadian Gianmarco Raimondo will be in the Spanish team’s cars and on the following day, Wednesday the 31st, it will be the turn of Dutchman Nigel Melker and Argentinian Facundo Regalia.

20 year old André Negrão, who was born in Sao Paulo the birthplace of racing legends Ayrton Senna and Emerson Fittipaldi, has been racing in the World Series by Renault for the last two seasons. The highlights of the season have been a 4th in Race 2 at the Moscow Raceway and a 3rd in Race 2 at the Nürburgring as well as leading at Paul Ricard in the wet before electrical problems slowed him.
Prior to this Andre raced in the Formula Renault 2.0 series in Italy and Portugal and in 2010 moved up to the FR 2.0 Eurocup where he proved his developing talent with a pole position and a podium finish in this very competitive series. He has also raced in the Brazil F3 Open taking a pole position and scoring several podium finishes.

Canadian Gianmarco Raimondo is 21 years old and first began to make his name in the 2009 Formula BMW Americas championship where he finished 3rd with one win and eight other podium finishes in the 12 race series. In 2010 Gianmarco moved up to the F3 Italian series finishing 16th at the end of the year. For 2011 the young Canadian progressed to the F3 Euroseries where he took a podium and finished 11th in the championship. His increasing experience in F3 cars saw Gianmarco win the 2012 European F3 Open in Spain taking no less than four wins, four pole positions, ten podiums and two fastest laps.

Nigel Melker was born in Rotterdam 21 years ago and is the most experienced of the four drivers and the only one with previous experience of driving a GP2 car. Nigel raced in Formula Renault 2.0 before moving up to GP3 in 2010 where he immediately showed his pace with two pole positions and in 2011 he was one of the fastest drivers finishing 3rd in the Series with six podiums including a win in the Turkish Feature Race as well as setting two fastest laps. Nigel also competed in the 2011 F3 Euroseries finishing 4th with four wins, two pole positions, nine podiums and two fastest laps.
In 2012, his first season of GP2 racing, Nigel took several top ten places with a best finish of 4th in the Silverstone Feature Race driving for the Ocean Racing Technology team. Additionally Nigel raced for Lotus in the World Series by Renault at the Silverstone round finishing 3rd in Race 1.

Facundo Regalia, born in Buenos Aires 20 years ago, is another graduate from Formula BMW, finishing 8th in the 2009 Europe series with three 4th place finishes. Continuing in the same series for 2010 Facundo finished 8th again with a 2nd place at Zandvoort being his best result. 2011 saw a move up to F3 in the Italian series where he took podium finishes at Imola and Vallelunga as well as taking a pole position and two fastest laps. Additionally Facundo competed in three races in the F3 Euroseries at Hockenheim at the end of the year.
It has been a busy season in 2012 where the young Argentinian has raced in the European F3 Open, the Auto GP World Series and GP3. In the F3 series Facu took one win in Hungary, two pole positions, four podiums and a fastest lap to finish 5th in the championship whilst the Auto GP races saw podiums at Valencia and Hungary and 7th in the table. Four races in GP3 for two different teams saw a best result of 12th at Silverstone.