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News Archive » News Round-Up January 16, 2010 The CRS Racing team was launched at Autosport International back in January 2008. In two busy years the team has scored 19 pole positions, 18 race victories and a CRS driver has gone on to shake the podium champagne on over 50 occasions. The team was back at the NEC this week with Chris Niarchos and Andrew Kirkaldy appearing on the main stage yesterday to talk about CRS’ extensive racing plans for 2010. “We’re going to continue with our GT2 programme, sticking with Ferrari of course,” said Niarchos. “We have entered a car into the Le Mans Series for Andrew (Kirkaldy) and Tim (Mullen) to drive. We are also close to entering a second car in that series. In addition to this I am going to race in the International GT Open series with Tim while Klaas Hummel and Chris Goodwin will run in another GT2 Ferrari.” “On the single-seater side we are running four cars in the Formula Renault Uk Championship and three in GP3, in partnership with Atech Grand Prix,” said Kirkaldy. “It’s an exciting step for us to move into GP3 as we are now building a motorsport ladder within CRS so our drivers can stay with us. Formula Renault is ultra-competitive now. If you can do well in Formula Renault you can do a god job in F1. It really does work out who the F1 stars of the future will be and if we can then help them move up to GP3 with us then that is great.” CRS continues to invest in the infrastructure of the company to enable the team to do more manufacturing in-house. The team has also installed a simulator, which can run with either a Formula Renault or Ferrari 430 chassis. This will be a great benefit to all of the CRS drivers and the engineering team and there’s no doubt it will become one of the most popular ! areas of the CRS Technical Centre! The team’s third race season actually got underway yesterday with the annual Celebrity Karting Challenge in the Live Action Arena at Autosport International. After winning the event in 2008, the CRS team rolled home in 13th place last year but pledged to make up for it this time out. Unfortunately the race was a demolition derby yesterday and, coupled with a transponder failure, the CRS team had no choice but to settle for 12th place. It was a fun event though and the CRS team performed well against some of the biggest names in motorsport. Allan McNish, Anthony Davidson, Darren Turner, Matt Neal, Alex Wurz, Franck Montagny, Nicolas Minassian, Emanuele Pirro and Paul Di Resta are just a few of the drivers who provided such tough competition today. Even though the race wasn’t the cleanest, the event raised a lot of money for Malaria No More so it was a resounding success. Autosport International is! on at the Birmingham NEC until Sunday. One of the team’s stunni ng Ferrari 430 GT2 cars is on display at the show, resplendent in its 2010 livery, an evolution of the well-known red, white and blue CRS racing colours. ENDS |
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