Zele Racing suffered from tyre problems in Saturday’s qualifying session for the AutoGP race in Budapest. Thus, Narain Karthikeyan (P7) and teammate Luciano Bacheta (P10) will start from further down on the grid into tomorrow’s double-header. Weiterlesen

Luciano Bacheta won his first AutoGP World Series race Sunday in Marrakech, Morocco, also the season’s first triumph for Zele Racing. Narain Karthikeyan was hit by De Jong early in the race. Weiterlesen

Despite starting from the front, the first of two races in Marrakech, Morocco, has not worked out as well as expected for Austrian team Zele Racing: Narain Karthikeyan finished sixth, while teammate Luciano Bacheta came eighth. Weiterlesen

Narain enjoyed a very good qualifying session finishing on P2. He was leading the pack for most of time. However, in the dying seconds his best lap was topped and due to traffic in his second stint, he could not hit back. Luciano came ninth and will aim for eighth place in the first race to secure again pole position this year for Sunday’s event. Weiterlesen

Luciano Bacheta crossed the finish line as runner-up in only his second AutoGP race in Monza on Sunday. Team mate Narain Karthikeyan fell victim to braking problems. Weiterlesen

At the AutoGP 2013 season opener in Monza both Zele drivers finished in the top eight. Former F1 driver Narain Karthikeyan recovered from a collision at the start to come fifth, while Luciano Bacheta placed eighth, which puts him on Pole Position for Sunday’s second race. Narain will start from P4. Weiterlesen

Zele Racing has invited Narain Karthikeyan to join them and compete in the first round of the 2013 AutoGP World Series at Monza, Italy. Weiterlesen

Luciano Bacheta is back in action! The 22-year-old Brit will race in the AutoGP World Series in 2013 after having joined Zele Racing Thursday. Winning the 2012 Formula Two championship, Bacheta earned himself a test drive with Williams F1, where he managed to show his outstanding talent. In order to gain more top-level racing experience for a future in Formula One, he has now teamed up with Zele Racing, a well-established Austrian racing team, to compete in AutoGP.

„I am very happy to be racing for Zele in 2013 and I hope I can help the team challenge for success. I see this year with Zele Racing as the start of a plan to be competitive year in, year out in a progression towards the ultimate goal of Formula 1”, Bacheta said.

Zele Racing, which was founded by former motorbike racer Hermann Zele and his son Michael in 2001, is looking back on a successful history in motor racing including the World Series by Nissan, the Superfund Euro3000, the LeMans Series and AutoGP.

„It is great to have the reigning F2 champion on board. Luciano is a highlytalented driver, who has already proven his skill on several occasions. I am certain, we are ahead of a good season,“ team owner Michael Zele has expressed his delight.

Auto GP is managed and promoted by Coloni Motorsport and will be running eight rounds, featuring two races every race weekend at each venue. The season starts on March 24th in Monza, Italy, and finishes on October 6th in Brno, Czech Republic.

“Auto GP is establishing itself as an extremely exciting series, and for Luciano this represents a good step up from Formula 2. With hopefully another successful season, he will be one step closer to realising the dream of Formula 1,”, Dan Chapman, senior partner of Full Contact who manage Luciano, said.

Zele-Racing drivers Giuseppe Cipriani and Sergio Campana finished day 2 of the official AutoGP wintertest at Barcelona on positions 12 and 5 overall. Whilst Sergios laptime put him inofficialy on P2 of the 2012 cars and 2012 tire compounds, which was a satisfying performance for the team, there were several problems which prevented Giuseppe from setting a better laptime today.

Michael Zele:“ I would really like to apologise to Giuseppe for all the problems we had to face during the two days of testing. It´s not my style to go fishing for excuses and i truly regret that we were not able to give him the best possible tool to move up the ranks. We now have to focus on 2013 and we already took the decision to introduce several changes whithin our organisation to avoid such problems in the future.“

 The cars and equipment are returning now to the Austrian base to undergo a full rebuild. During the winter break both cars will receive the 2013 aero kit and technical updates for the new season. Meanwhile the development of the 2013 car will continue to further improve the already very promising performance.

Zele Racing drivers Sergio Campana and Giuseppe Cipriani finished in todays official AutoGP wintertest at Barcelona in overall positions 4 and 12. Campana, who set his fastest time at 3:00 p.m. without using tirewarmers, was reasonably happy with his performance.

Campana:“ My fastest lap was not perfect and we still have to trim our car a bit, but we have proved once again, that we can be very quick. Some teams have used tirewarmers today which for sure made a big difference since it took us quite a while to bring the tires up to working temperature.“

Meanwhile Zele-Racing newcomer Giuseppe Cipriani kept improving his laptimes consistently despite suffering an early end to his afternoon session because of a gearbox issue. Just when he hit the track with the faster soft Kumho tireset, 3rd gear quit the job and Giuseppe had to retire the car.

Michael Zele:“ Unfortunately we had a gearbox problem on Giuseppes car this afternoon, which prevented us to use the new set of tires. One of the gear ratios broke, which required proper inspection and cleaning of the gearbox internals afterwards. However we have been able to work out on which areas we can improve to help Giuseppe become a regular points scorer in 2013.“

Giuseppe Cipriani:“  We had a few gremlins today so it took a while to get used to the new environment. The aim for tomorrow is do do some decent running and obviousely i hope to move up the ranks. The mechanics have fixed the gearbox and we have some very fresh tires to start with tomorrow.“