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Nyck de Vries has won the 2014 Formula
Renault 2.0 ALPS title thanks to eight win
and an unmatchable speed. He deserved to
win the championship although at least half
of the credit must go to his team, Koiranen
Gran Prix, who provided him with a car that
proved almost perfect in every situation.
After having won with Daniil Kvyat, and
repeating the same stunning results with De
Vries, the Finnish squad has established
their name as a benchmark in the series.
After joining the GP3 Series last year, the
Koiranen brothers relied on their partner Afa
Heikkinen the management of the 'Renault
department' and the manager is achieving
considerable success. Koiranen has many
ramifications. In addition to Formula
Renault 2.0 and GP3, next year they will
organize the Estonian, Finnish and Russian
Formula 4 championship. They have many
ties to Petrobras to support new Brazilian
prospects and with China to try and find the
first real talent coming from there. It's like a
parent company that celebrated their latest
success at Mugello, although they want to
stay in the news for the rest of the year.
Mission accomplished, congratulations...
“Thank you! Well, one of our early goals
was to win this title. We knew that Nyck
had the chance to capitalize his experience
and we were optimists, but it wasn't clearly
in the pocket yet. We're happy because we
work so hard to get this result”.
From our point of view, winning seemed
an even too easy task for Nyck...
“Maybe, but obviously everybody know that
it's never easy. And we also had our
difficult moments. At Monza, for example,
we didn't get the right chemistry with the
driver and i tended up bad. In every season,
there are good races and other when it
simply doesn't work out. Luckily, we had
more runs where the team, driver and car
worked perfectly.
Did you have a little of pressure before
the start of the season? Many had
anticipated your win..
“Yes of course. Nyck was an experienced
driver with a great past in go-kart racing
and part of the McLaren Junior Program.
The expectations were really high. From
this point of view, people tend to
underestimate an aspect which has actually
a pretty big impact on the teams'
dynamics. Sometimes it causes failures, but
sometimes underlines the success. It just
takes to manage it and we accomplished
the feature”.
How do you judge the 2014 season of
Koiranen GP?
"I can say I'm happy of the performance
level showed by the team. Of course we
have to distinguish because we had an
experienced driver together with some
rookies. The general level satisfied me
though, it's very high. Last year this series
has been tiring for several reasons and
many indicated our GP3 debut as a the
