Dams Claim First Win of Year
Dan Ticktum took a lights to flag victory for DAMS at his home event of Silverstone.
The Brit took reverse grid pole and claimed the first win of the season for the reigning teams’ champions.
The result comes on the eve of the first anniversary of the passing of DAMS team founder Jean-Paul Driot and is a fitting way for the team to mark the occasion.
Ticktum said: “[It was] the first win of many I hope! The start today was very good, it’s really encouraging to see we have pace in the first few laps. We’ve struggled before, so we changed our warm-up strategy this weekend. After that, I just had to control the race, particularly the front tyre degradation, and I was able to pull a gap. The end was a bit tricky with Lundgaard chasing on fresh tyres. For the last three laps, I was pushing like my life depended on it. We still have areas to improve, our one-lap performance in qualifying wasn’t quite there, but we recovered in the feature race to get reverse grid pole which was the target.”
Meanwhile, Sean Gelael didn’t have a great weekend. He started 16th and only claimed one place during the feature race. In the sprint race, the Indonesian driver was forced to retire because of a problem in his pitstop.
Gelael said: “It was a difficult weekend for me. It was such a tight qualifying, a couple more tenths and we’d have started in the top 10. We had strong pace in the feature race, but in the dirty air, it was tough to overtake. We pitted under the late safety car in the sprint race so we could pick our way through the field, but I left the box with a loose wheel, and I had to retire. It’s a shame because I know our team very rarely make errors and I know we can fight higher up. We’re staying positive and aiming to improve for the second Silverstone meeting.”
DAMS will be hoping for more to celebrate when Formula 2 returns to Silverstone in less than a week.
Image Credits: (C) Formula Motorsport Limited
