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KMP Group/SG Formula

World Series by Renault - Formula Renault 3.5 Series

14^th and 15^th rounds, Nürburgring September 19-20 2009

Onwards and upwards!

After qualifying 6^th in the two-group format at Portimao, KMP Group/SG Formula took part in its first Formula Renault 3.5 Series Superpole session at the Nurburgring thanks to the 3^rd best time recorded by Guillaume Moreau in Group B. Although problems in the Superpole meant that the Frenchman was unable to consolidate the potential of his car during the actual races, the team from La Rochelle did not return home quite empty handed. Russian driver Anton Nebylitskiy(pictured) scored the point for the best climb after turning in a solid performance in front of 90,000 spectators at the German leg of the World Series by Renault.

Following on from its first podium place in Portugal, the team continued its learning curve on the Nurgburgring Grand Prix track. “Since testing is not allowed outside meetings, open practice is the only chance we get to assess new solutions”, explained team manager Stéphane Guérin. “We soon realized that we had got it wrong on the Friday and our engineers set to work on developing the set-up which had worked so well in Portimao”. This enabled Guillaume Moreau to achieve a superb 3^rd best time on the Saturday morning, which meant that he was able to take part in a genuine Superpole session for the first time. Anton was less fortunate since a red flag waved two minutes from the end of the race caused him to cut his speed in what was promising to be a fast lap.

The Superpole is a special event calling also for experience. Guillaume used only one set of new tyres and came away with the 11^th best time. The Limoges-born driver nevertheless hoped to muster some points. He got away perfectly at the start of race 1. He chose to brake on the inside line at the famous Mercedes Arena turn but found himself stuck there when another driver cut across him. Part of the front wing was damaged in the impact and Guillaume ended the first lap in 13^th place before quickly climbing back to 9^th position. Unfortunately on the ninth lap a rival driver error meant that the back of car No. 26 was hit by the car coming back onto the track and Guillaume was unable to avoid going into a tailspin. This was a pity since he’d got the race dynamics right, as is evident from the best partial time set in the highly technical second track sector. Instead of finishing 11^th, Guillaume could well have snatched 6^th, or even 5^th place, from the Alguersuari/Pic duo.

For his part, Anton went up three places on the first lap and four on the second, and passed the former Formula Renault 2.0 Eurocup runner-up, Van der Drift. In the end he crossed the finishing line in 12^th position, two seconds behind Guillaume. He opened his account in the championship standings by managing to win the point for the best climb.

Both KMP Group/SG Formula drivers came close to earning points on the Saturday and had every intention of picking some up on the Sunday. Anton came close to achieving this objective but excessive understeering prevented him from challenging Van der Drift for the last available point and he came home in 11^th place. In all the confusion on the first turn, Guillaume once again failed to come out unscathed. This time the damage was more serious and, despite attempts to repair the front wheel axle unit, he was forced to retire.

“I think that the team has ramped up a notch since Portimao, which was a kind of neutral terrain for everyone on the grid”, said Stéphane Guérin. “It’ll be the same too at Motorland, another new circuit, with all the teams starting from square one. It’s up to us to take advantage of the situation and prove that we’re competitive.” The FR3.5 Series will complete its European tour in Spain on 24 and 25 October.

12^th and 13^th rounds, Portimao July 31 – August 2

With everyone starting from scratch …a podium place for SG Formula

In what was only its fifth Formula Renault 3.5 Series meeting at Portimao, the SG Formula team came away fair and square with its first podium place. 6th in the qualifications and already 5thin race 1, Guillaume Moreau passed the chequered flag in 3rd position in race 2. This splendid effort in Portugal was just reward for a team which really did tackle this new category front on by the nard route.

Considerable progress was recorded at Le Mans by the French team, which had been involved in FR 3.5 Series racing for less than three months. Guillaume Moreau had moved up from 19th to 13th place in race 1, before stalling at the start of race 2, gaining 13 places and slotting into 12th overall. On the new Portimao circuit, however, the Franco-Russian squad was clearly reading from a different song sheet. Team Manager Stéphane Guérin told us what he thought about this spectacular improvement: “the fact that we were racing in neutral territory, so to speak, made things easier for us. No team was able to rely on data stored over previous years or to run private trials on the track beforehand. Rival teams arrived at Portimao with no basic setup, as has been the case with us since we first became involved in Formula Renault 3.5. Consequently, we were starting more or less on the same footing, though it was clear that we were beginning to become more familiar with the operation of this single seater.”

Guillaume Moreau set the tone by scoring a first point during qualifications, finishing 3rd in group A, less than two tenths of a second behind the fastest time, and 6th in the general classification. As proof of his own progress in the event, his Russian team mate Anton Nebylistky reeled off the 7th fastest time in group B. The Portuguese round of the championships was organized as a curtain-raiser to the Algarve 1000 km, counting towards the Le Mans Series, and race timing prevented the usual Superpole session from being staged. Otherwise Anton would have been just one place away from his first “superqualification”.

Guillaume had a great start in race 1 and moved up from 4th to 2nd place before slipping back to 3rd position for two thirds of the race. Super fast in the technical sections, an over long sixth gear ratio meant that he was always labouring in the straight. Nevertheless, the Limoges-born driver did record a first concrete result by taking 5th place. The team paid for its lack of experience, however, as confirmed by Stéphane Guérin: “We wouldn’t have made that mistake had we been able to carry out winter tests. We were able to put things right for race 2. Guillaume covered the 27 laps in 3rd place and was on hand to challenge Charles Pic. However, we asked him to take no risks if he found himself in a position to win us this first podium placing.”

Anton Nebylitski (pictured above) too could be very pleased with his weekend in Portugal. 12th in race 1, he was still close to winning his first point on the 16th lap of race 2 when his path and that of a spinning Jon Lancaster unfortunately crossed. “Anton raised his game and was able to keep up (to the thousand of a second) with James Walker, who is in 2nd position in the championship. He was 13th on the grid at Portimao, so I think he’ll be among the 12 qualifiers for the Superpole at the Nurburgring. His pairing with Guillaume Moreau is working very nicely and efficiently. This is a positive outlook for the team, which can therefore learn twice as much information”, Guérin ended by saying. The penultimate meeting of the season will be taking place at the Nurburgring on 19 and 20 September.

6^th and 7^th rounds, Hungaroring June 13-14

8^th and 9^th rounds, Silverstone July 4-5

KMP Group/SG Formula on the right track

With its performances in Hungary and the UK, the KMP Group/SG Formula team demonstrated that it has come on a lot since its rough and ready first outing in Formula Renault 3.5 racing Series in Monaco. The Franco-Russian outfit still has a lot to do to catch up with the front-runners in the class but there were encouraging signs in these two World Series by Renault meetings that it is on the right track. One example was the bonus point won by Guillaume Moreau at Silverstone for climbing the most places through the field.

Coincidentally, the team's cars bear the same numbers as the legendary Ligier F1 cars back in the eighties. Russian Anton Nebylitskiy races in No. 25 while experienced drivers have taken turns at the wheel of No. 26. Much in the same way as Jules Bianchi did in Monaco, Edoardo Mortara did a one-off drive in Hungary because he wanted to get to know the circuit in readiness for his race there this summer in the GP2 Series.

Guillaume Moreau, on the other hand, has signed up for the rest of the season. This signals a double comeback for the man from Limoges. He's back in a single-seater after a spell in endurance racing that includes a GT1 title in the Le Mans Series and three starts in the Le Mans 24-hour race. Formula Renault 3.5 holds no secret for him, except for the new aerodynamics package introduced for the 2009 season. He raced in this category throughout 2007 and half of 2008, picking up numerous podium places and notching a win in Magny-Cours. This is also the occasion for Guillaume to join up with a team he knows well, having been part of it when it was created in 2004. Back then, their collaboration quickly produced results, as both team and driver won their first victory in motor racing in their very first outing in the French Formula Renault 2.0 championship!

In Budapest, Edoardo Mortara's performance was pretty amazing. He was 3^rd in open practice but qualifying went wrong for him when a faulty radio prevented the team informing him about traffic conditions. He made up for it with brilliant performances in the races. He would have finished close to the Top 10 on the Saturday had Greg Mansell not rammed him in the penultimate turn. An aggressive race strategy on the Sunday could have seen him on the podium. "We did the mandatory wheel change very early in the race," said team-manager Stéphane Guérin. “When the safety car came out we could have pulled off the hold up of the century because Edoardo went ahead of the eventual winner after his pitstop. Unfortunately he spun off but we really enjoyed having him along. Eduardo's a natural when it comes to speed and hard work.”

“Our results at Silverstone may have been less striking but the context was entirely different," went on Stéphane Guérin. "We have no data, we have next to no experience in the category and we had no chance to do any test sessions to get to know the car. We had to start virtually from scratch each time. For the Hungaroring we used our Formula Renault 2.0 set ups but it wasn't so easy at Silverstone because the circuit is a lot more demanding. Our basic set up proved to be way off during open practice. Thankfully Guillaume was able to give us some decent feedback. Our engineers worked late into the night, helped by their Formula 3 colleagues back in La Rochelle who were working with our simulation software. That enabled us to go into qualifying with much better handling."

So much so that Guillaume missed out on qualifying for the Superpole by just half a second on the Saturday morning. In Race 1 he moved through the field from 24^th to 16^th place despite a collision with Di Sabatino in the 2^nd lap, which earned him the bonus point for climbing the most places in the race order, thus opening KMP Group/SG Formula's points tally in the championship. On the Sunday, Guillaume climbed even higher in the order, moving up from 17^th to 12^th thanks to a great start and to some slick wheel changing. "Bravo the team that performed one of the fastest pitstops of the field. We've made good progress as our performance at Silverstone showed but we can't be satisfied yet. Guillaume's arrival gives us confidence for the future because he is good in all situations. I'm confident we'll be able to pick up points other than the one for best race order improvement! On the other hand, it's a great pity that Anton had to drop out of both races due to collisions.”

Monaco May 23-25

The first step is always the hardest!

It was already quite a race for KMP Group SG Formula to beat the timetable and get to Monte-Carlo in time for practice for the 5th round of the Formula Renault 3.5 Series. They came away from the meeting with the satisfaction of having seen Anton Nebylitskiy complete the 25-lap race on the season's trickiest circuit.

The "Go 3.5!" project was hatched just two weeks before the race so it was always going to be a big challenge. But, of course, you have to start somewhere! Nobody was expecting miracles from a team and which had no experience of racing these 500HP monsters around the mythical Monaco circuit. However, everyone stuck to their task with the will to make progress and to learn from the experience of racing against opponents who, for the most part, have been competing in the category ever since it was created in 2005. Of course KMP Group SG Formula could have done without the mechanical problems and collisions that dogged Anton Nebylitskiy and Jules Bianchi, as Stephane Guerin told us. "Unfortunately, we fell short of our objective, which was for cars and drivers to complete a maximum number of laps. On the plus side, it was a considerable achievement just getting everything up and running in a fortnight without interfering with our other activities. You have to remember that the schedule for the Formula Renault 2.0 WEC competition, for which we recruited extra staff and set up new workshops, has a 5-month hole in it between June 9th and the start of November. During that period six of our people only have one meeting to take part in. So we had some staff under-occupied. It would have been a shame to let go people with whom we were satisfied, especially as SG Formula prides itself on training young mechanics and engineers. It's part of our vocation."

Jules Bianchi and Anton Nebylitskiy knew nothing about the Monaco circuit until they took to the tarmac for 45 minutes of open practice at the start of the meeting. Unfortunately, Jules was not destined to learn a lot more as he had to drop out after 7 laps due to a clutch problem. Anton managed to double that lap total before losing an argument with a crash barrier. After so little practice the boys logically enough found themselves at the back of the grid after qualifying. The Russian was in 24th place and the Frenchman, dogged by a sticky gearbox, was in 26th place. The race took part just a few hours ahead of the 67th Monaco Grand Prix. Starting from the pits was bad enough but Jules hit the rails in Lap 17 at the Piscine turn. Anton, on the other hand, crossed the finishing line in 20th position after lapping at 1'28''420, which was a lot quicker than in qualifying and only five-tenths of a second off the race winner's best time.

"Against all the odds we made it to Monaco. Sadly we met with a few technical problems, not to mention a couple of crash barriers!" concluded Stephane Guerin. "There was always a risk we'd hit this kind of problem. It's OK, we took it on the chin and now we'll be focused on the job ahead. I'm not overly worried. With the cars now safely back in La Rochelle we'll be preparing calmly for Budapest in mid-June. Just as we did in Monaco, we'll be entering an experienced and rapid driver alongside Anton."

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