The 2008 GP2 Season Preview

It's rare for a rookie to start any season by being tipped for the title, but that's exactly the position in which Romain Grosjean finds himself after dominating the GP2 Asia series this winter.

The 22-year-old Renault test driver won the Formula 3 Euro Series in 2007 and graduated to GP2 straight away in the Asian-based winter championship. That he remained with ART through the transition only helped him to adapt to his new surroundings and he was up to speed by the first race.

It is true that the Asian series shouldn't be compared too directly with the main championship, but a lot of things will stay the same. Reigning champions iSport International run Bruno Senna and Karun Chandhok, as they did in the winter.

Campos Racing keep Vitaly Petrov and Ben Hanley and the potentially front running Arden and DAMS pairings stay the same as well. There's no reason to believe that the drivers' relative form will change dramatically from that in the winter.

But there are changes. Grosjean will have a team-mate to give him a run for his money this time as third year driver, and proven race winner, Luca Filippi joins ART for what will be a make or break season for the Italian. The environment in the team is bound to be different with two potential champions on board than it was for Grosjean in Asia where he was the main focus.

Another potential race winner joins up for the main series in the shape of reigning Formula Renault 3.5 champion Alvaro Parente. The Portuguese driver has dominated British F3 and the Renault World Series in his career so far and should be looking for wins straight away, despite his lack of GP2 experience.

Giorgio Pantano joins Racing Engineering © LAT

Racing Engineering were the only GP2 team not to enter GP2 Asia, so there are two more drivers thrown into the fold at the front, with the experienced Giorgio Pantano and Javier Villa also both expected to win races. Andi Zuber joins Pastor Maldonado at Piquet Sports in the much the same position.

There's no doubting that the competition for the first eight places will be more intense, and the task of keeping on top of a 21-race season lasting six months is an altogether different one from the winter series, which Grosjean effectively had wrapped up after four events.

The catastrophic bad luck Senna suffered during the Asian championship surely can't hold him back for the entire summer championship as well. Filippi was competitive in Asia with GP2 newcomers Meritus but will be at an advantage with ART all year, while Grosjean's fellow rookies have had half a season's worth of running to tune into the car and now have the added motivation of all the scores being reset to zero.

With so many drivers on the fringe of making it, GP2 is unlikely to be the two-horse race it was last year. While Senna vs Grosjean may seem the likely duel, chances are that at least one of Filippi, Pantano, Villa, Zuber, Chandok, Maldonado, or Petrov will drag themselves into the battle. And that's before you even consider other rookies, such as Parente, Adrian Valles, Sebastien Buemi, or Hanley, who all have the previous records to suggest they are potential challengers as well.

But at the same time, anyone who gets off to a flying start will find the intensity of the competition behind an advantage. If one driver can get a few wins in the bag early in the season, he might find his rivals are too busy taking points off each other to catch him.

The race will be on at Barcelona this weekend to get off to the best possible start. Senna shared the spoils with Glock in Catalunya last season so he'll be looking to find that form again.