DAMS Francois Sicard pushing to improve

Reigning teams’ champions DAMS had a difficult time on track during the third round of the 2020 Formula 2 Championship.

“This was a tough weekend for us. It started out with a practice session where it was too damp for slicks but not enough for the wet tyres, so we didn’t set a time and jumped straight into qualifying, which went very well. According to the drivers, it could have been even better, but nevertheless, they were in tough conditions.” said DAMS, Managing Director Francois Sicard.

The big talking point of the 2020 car’s are the new wheels, the teams, however, had been happy with their performance following the first two races in Austria.

This weekend though saw the initial concerns come to light and Sicard was surprised like many that the tyre degradation was so high.

Hungary is known for a fair amount of tyre deg’ but even following the Feature Race it still may have seemed fanciful by many strategists that nearly all the cars having a pit stop in the Sprint Race on Sunday would be a reality.

“The feature race was extremely hard with the huge amount of tyre degradation that other teams and we were surprised by after what we saw in Austria. We stopped Dan early to try to undercut and consolidate our position. We had another issue on Sean’s car, it looks like the same one we had in Austria, which we thought was fixed, it’s a shame because he was running seventh at the time.”

“Both drivers had great starts on a Sunday, but unfortunately a faulty spark plug for Dan took him out of a strong position. Sean moved forward and managed the degradation well, almost every car did a pit stop which is pretty unusual for a sprint race, it just shows how high it was this weekend.” said the MD.

Both DAMS and team boss Sicard believe they still have many positives to take away from Hungary as they now take a well earned few days off and plan for Silverstone.

“We have work to do before Silverstone, but we are constantly pushing to improve.”

DAMS currently sit fifth in the championship and will be hoping that the doubleheader in Silverstone can show improvements to help them get their feet back in the championship battle.