#15 Dan Ticktum (GBR – Mugen Honda/M-TEC HR-417E)
Qualifying: 16th – Grid: 16th – Race: 8th
#50 Lucas Auer (AUT – B-Max/Motopark Honda/M-TEC HR-417E)
Qualifying: 11th – Grid: 11th – Race: 7th
Neither Dan Ticktum nor Lucas Auer were expecting an easy ride at the open round of the Super Formula championship in Suzuka. The Red Bull Juniors toughed it out with 24-year-old Austrian Auer picking up seventh ahead of the 19-year-old Briton Ticktum.
Ticktum looking for the base to build on
“We’ve learnt a lot, of course we didn’t get the result we wanted but we can go forward from here,” asserted Ticktum. “It’s a new car for everyone and some of the teams that struggled with the old car have found a good base setting and other teams haven’t yet got a good base.”
“That is where we are at the moment, we’ve still got work to do on the base setting. Still I think we were quick enough to run in the top eight but things didn’t go our way in qualifying. There were so many red flags it was like Macau trying to get a clear run in Q1. I ended up backed up before my push lap, backed up so much that I got passed and when I had to go for it I was running in dirty air. It wrecked my lap for me.”
“That was a big shame because we had a better setting for the soft tyre that you run in Q2, we never got to use it. For the race I did what I could, did some overtaking at the right time and made the best out of the car but we were coming from a long way back and only really got eighth because of others making mistakes.”
“So we’ll learn from this weekend and work hard, get ourselves in a better position for Autopolis.”
Auer positive about the promise
“We worked hard this weekend and learnt a lot,” stated Auer. “The team is getting together well and I know we will be making a lot of progress going into the next round so we have a lot of positives to be pleased about even if the result at Suzuka could have been better.”
“We suffered in Qualifying because we had a set-up for the medium tyre but not the soft, there we were weak. So we got through Q1 OK but then had to put the soft on for Q2 and it was game-over.”
“In the race there were a lot of safety cars and things didn’t run very smoothly for us, I lost 30 second in the pits at one point so seventh was as good as we could manage. We have all got a lot of work to do but we expected that, we knew it wasn’t going to be at all easy.”
“As I said, the signs of improvement are there and I am sure that will show in the coming races.”
Source: Red Bull Junior Team – https://win.gs/2GGrHJN