PRESS RELEASE N° 12/2007

BIREL MOTORSPORT WANTS TO ANNUNCE THE 2007 INTERNATIONAL SEASON.

WITTMANN, CROXFORD, ANTONFIELD E IL COLLAUDATORE PATRONO PROSEGUIRANNO LO SVILUPPO DEI NUOVI MOTORI TM, MENTRE CESETTI E TURCHETTO AFFRONTERANNO LA STAGIONE AGONISTICA CON I MOTORI IAME.

[13-03] The introduction of the new engines “KF-Long Life” in the final version, were only omologated in the last days of January, this made Birel Motorsport modify there strategy to face the international season of 2007 at there best. The Birel and the Tm factory have had many years of victorious events togheter, they have made a program of various intense testes for the optimaisation of the new KF engines. Birel and Tm have already made many tests from the date of omologation to the race Trofeo Margutti held in Parma on the 4th of March. In this month the tests driver Giacomo Patrono and the other drivers from Birel Motorspot have dedicated a lot of hard work make the engine as competitive as possible. They made a dead line at the Trofeo Margutti race to compare exactly at what point they were. The results of the work made togheter was fairly encouraging.
In all categories (KF1,KF2,KF3) the engines showed great progress, but still need more time and testing to make the performance better, this could make the first part of the season difficult.
For this reason Birel and TM togheter have decided to reduce the number of the ufficial drivers, Giacomo Patrono will be the test driver to do most of the development of the Tm engines togheter with Marco Wittman (who will be partly dedicated to race in formula BMW).
Also Croxford will make the tests in KF1 while Peter Antonfield in KF2.
For this reason it is confermed the collaboration between Birel and Tm for the class KZ1, to support the drivers Laudato and Cozzaglio (that will use the new Monza chassis).
These decisions have opened the door for the drivers Sauro Cesetti (KF1) and Mario Turchetto (KF2) to use the engines provided by the Iame factory.
The IAME engine was one of the first to make development with the new type of engines giving then a slight advantage over other engine manufactories.
For this reason the Birel technicians have decided that all the drivers from the “EASYKART DRIVERS PROGRAM” will use IAME engines in KF3.
This choice join two strategies, as Ronnie Sala says:
“For this reason to make things easier for a driver like Cesetti (who wants always the maximum performance), we think that this is the only way for helping both the driver and the engine manufacturer to obtain best results.
At the same time we can’t compromise our competitive results at this stage of the season.
The decision to collaborate with IAME will also guarantee a consistent comparison between IAME and TM. This will not change the relationship between Birel and TM in fact this decision was made togheter that’s why Patrono will continue all the development of Tm engines.
At the same time, we are happy to start an official collaboration with IAME, a factory that we have been collaborating for a long time with some of our external teams and also with the EASYKART progect.
At the end I want to be clear that the voices about Birel reducting there official team in the International races are completely wrong, in fact we confirm that we will be present at all the CIK/FIA events this year.
I would also like to say that the position of Birel remains completely in favor of the new rules and the choices of the International Federation who are fondamental instruments to launch once again our sport.”