Jake Rosenzweig replaces Josef Kral at Barwa Addax for Monza

American driver Jake Rosenzweig will make his return to the GP2 Series this weekend in Monza, as the 23-year-old prepares to replace Josef Kral for this weekend’s penultimate race weekend of the season. This comes after Kral won last time out in Belgium, and is the second time the Czech driver has been replaced this season.

Jake Rosenzweig raced for Super Nova Racing in last season’s non-Championship final at Abu Dhabi, and has this season raced in the Formula Renault 3.5 Series (World Series by Renault) for ISR, albeit yielding slightly uncompetitive results with a personal best of 6th at Spa-Francorchamps earlier in the year. This is the third driver change ahead of this weekend’s Italian Grand Prix, after Stefano Coletti moved from Coloni to Rapax, forcing Coloni to re-sign Luca Filippi to fill his vacant seat.

This change is the second time Barwa Addax have replaced Josef Kral, after the Czech driver was replaced by HRT reserve driver Dani Clos for the two back-to-back Bahrain races at the start of the season. Although the Czech driver has endured a highly uncompetitive season throughout 2012, Josef Kral did win last time out at Spa-Francorchamps. However, this was only Kral’s second finish in the points all season, and could well be the reason behind why Addax have replaced Kral with Rosenzweig.

Jake Rosenzweig will become the first American driver to partake in an official GP2 event since the inaugural season back in 2005, when Scott Speed raced for iSport International alongside Turkish driver Can Artam. Barwa Addax have won three races so far this season, with both Josef Kral and Johnny Cecotto jr. victorious throughout the year. Jake Rosenzweig will undoubtedly be striving to emulate those results, and battle at the sharp end of the field for a competitive race result once the action gets underway this weekend.

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