The Carlin team suffered a mixed weekend at the Hungaroring as Jehan Daruvala reflects on how he can improve. 

Jehan Daruvala scored his first points of the Formula 2 season, and the 21-year-old driver had the pace for much more while Yuki Tsunoda had a messy and disappointing weekend.

Daruvala said: “I think that qualifying was quite tricky for us in the wet. But really I think that my main thing, in both races, honestly, it’s the starts. I dropped six or seven positions at the starts.

Apart from that, I think that the races have been pretty good, I would say. It’s been quite hard with the tyre degradation, a lot more than at the Red Bull Ring and we did not expect to have this much.

But the team did a really good job of pitting at the right time and making the right call with the tyres, so that was a big help.”

The Indian driver was happy with the package at his disposal from the team and really maintained that he would want to look within the cockpit for the required improvements;

“We could have been top five yesterday and the top six today, so it really is the main thing, like I said, to fix the problem with the starts. Then we can fight right up there and get more points and podiums.

The problem is that the bite point change from the formation lap to the race start. It’s not fixed, not consistent, so it’s really tough for me to know how much travel there is and where to place the clutch. We have two pedals; one is for the bite and one we completely release. When the bite point keeps moving, it’s quite difficult.

During testing, it was not moving. But now, somehow in the last two race weekends the bite point moves a lot. So, we’ve got to change the way we deal with it and take it into account, know how to deal with it and change our procedures because it is clearly not working for me right now.

On the positive side, I think that both races were quite strong in terms of pace, so that is very good but dropping so many places at the start just makes my life so hard for the race.”

Both Carlin drivers will hope that the week off will give them time to return to form so they can return to the doubleheader in Silverstone with some good results.