In the round-up: Alfa Romeo’s head of trackside engineering Xevi Pujolar says that improving the team’s start performance will be “critical” to their efforts to keep Aston Martin behind them in the constructors’ championship
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In brief
Improving poor starts “critical” to keeping ahead of Aston Martin, say Alfa Romeo
Alfa Romeo’s head of trackside engineering Xevi Pujolar says that improving the team’s start performance will be “critical” to their efforts to keep Aston Martin behind them in the constructors’ championship.
The team have struggled from poor starts relative to their rivals, with both Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu losing multiple positions off the line and over the opening lap during many races this season. Alfa Romeo remain in sixth position in the constructors’ championship, but now are only eight points ahead of Aston Martin, who have outscored them by 29 points to one over the last nine rounds.
“The starts and lap one is something that for us is getting a bit critical,” admitted Pujolar. “We need to get out of these positions, losing places at the start on lap one.
“We’ll have some new parts coming at the next event again in Austin and the plan is, okay, another step in performance. Let’s see if we can have both cars in Q3 – and from there, we saw early in the season that then it’s easier starts on lap one – and fight for the points with both cars. That’s what we want to do. We want to increase the gap to Aston Martin again because they’re getting too close. That’s our the main target and our main worry in the next few races.”
Aron wins first FREC Catalunya race
Paul Aron, Mercedes junior driver, claimed victory in the first of two races in the Formula Regional European Championship at Barcelona yesterday.
The Prema driver won from pole position, holding off heavy pressure from Hadrien David over the closing laps, while team mate and championship leader Dino Beganovic failed to score any points with a 11th place finish.
Beganovic now leads the championship by 43 points over Gabriele Mini and Aron behind. The second race of the weekend will take place today.
Mercedes…
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