Le Castellet. July. Three words. Hot, sweaty, stinky. There are no better words to describe Paul Ricard during the summer. 

This time, we were back on the Grand Prix layout, finally. Private practice got off to a difficult start, with both cars being far off the pace. Turns out that our struggles were caused by a faulty fuel pump, paired with a set of very used tires. With less than an hour between FP1 & FP2, the team had to put in a huge effort to get the problem solved. Thankfully, they were able to get the car back in running order only a couple of minutes into FP2. 

With a fresh set of tires, and a few small tweaks to the setup, the car felt completely different. The first thing I noticed was how much front-end the car had. But as soon as I started leaning on the lateral grip of the tire, the rear-end would snap. It felt like there was a lot more lap time out there, but I was struggling too much to get the most out of the car.

FP3. On one of my first flying laps, I saw yellow flags going into turn three. As I got to the exit of T3, I saw the sister car in the barriers. It looked as if it had gone rear first into the inside wall. Fortunately, Alessandro (the driver of the 77) was already out and seemed to be OK. Unfortunately, this meant that I wouldn’t be able to get a proper lap in for what was left of the session.

Quali. I was in for Q2. We were out later in the afternoon, so track temps were much lower and a lot of the Michelin rubber had been laid down. We knew that times were going to be pretty low. Straight out on the out-lap, it felt like the car was going to be quick. The front-end was like on rails. The rear-end was planted. It just gave me the confidence to push harder and harder, lap after lap, in every single corner. By the end of the session, I was P1, 4 tenths up on P2. The Q1-Q2-Q3 average put us on pole for Sunday’s race.

Race day. 32 degrees. It was hot. REAL HOT. Miguel was taking the start, alongside Alessandro on the front row. At the start, we lost the lead going into turn one. It was clear that everyone was struggling in the heat. By the end of his stint, we were sitting in P4. I was up next. Leaving the box, the car was on low fuel and fresh tires. It felt almost as good as in qualy. In the first few laps of my stint, I felt really comfortable with the car. The balance felt similar to qualy, but the track temperature was much higher (higher track temp = higher tire degradation & less grip). 

I stayed out on track until I saw the fuel alarm, and then boxed to refuel. As soon as I rejoined, I noticed a massive shift in balance. The car felt like it did in FP2 again. I just couldn’t laterally load the tire without getting huge snap oversteer. That mostly had to do with the fact that on a full load of fuel, the car weighed about 74kg more than it did a lap ago. I tried to adapt my driving style by bringing less speed into corner entries and trying to force the car to rotate earlier to gain time on corner exits. 

I knew that if I was struggling with full fuel, everyone else would be, so I just had to work with it. Even so, I was catching up to the next car up the road by over a second per lap. I just had to settle in this rhythm, and not make any mistakes and I’d catch them by the end of my stint. After keeping my head down, I was able to unlap myself from the #13 and caught up to the #21. I was able to get past them going into T3, and afterward, it was heads down for the last few laps of my run. When I brought the car in for the driver change, we were P1. 

Mathis grabbed the car for the closing stint of the race. Just like me, after the first few laps of his stint, he came in to refuel. When he rejoined on track, he was P2, behind the #16 car. We were one handicap up on them, so all we had to do was stay within their handicap window. Mathis did just that, running the fastest lap on our car, and was on par with Mathias Beche in the #16. In the closing stages of the race, the 16 car came in to serve their final handicap and gave us the lead. We crossed the line, P1 with a 33-second advantage over P2. 

Three for three! Amazing. I can’t thank the team enough for their fantastic work. We’ve now got a couple of months to go before the next round in Le Mans. We aren’t letting up, we’ve got our heads down, and we’re hungry for more.