It’s literally been and up and down start to the weekend for Douglas Motorsport’s Lucas Staico, who enjoyed a competitive showing on Friday, but only after rolling his car on Thursday.
The Brazilian F4 front-runner was right in the mix on Thursday, lapping just seven tenths of a second away from the pace setter in the second session of the day. But moments later, his world (briefly) turned upside down.
“It’s been a bit crazy!” he exclaimed after Friday testing. “Yesterday we had a decent first session and then the second session was going pretty well and then I made a huge mistake. I actually flipped the car at a high speed corner so unfortunately we missed the last session of the day.
“It’s a bit sad to have missed that but I was ok and the car was recovered for today. In the morning we still had some troubles with the car and now from the afternoon session I think I need to improve my driving style a little bit more and build up my confidence to get good speed in qualifying.”
Staico was full of praise for his Douglas Motorsport team, who had the car ready to go once more in time for the resumption of testing at Oulton Park this morning.
“The team did a brilliant job, I need to thank them a lot after everything we’ve been through. I’m very grateful for them and I hope I can reward them with a good weekend.”
A good weekend could be in store too, having rebuilt his pace and confidence on Friday.
“I’m getting used to the car more quickly than I thought. I need to improve a lot more with my driving style, mainly with putting the sectors together, and I think I can do a top-10 in this first round here.”
He’s also enjoying the challenging Oulton Park layout, which is providing a stern test compared to circuits he’s used to in his homeland.
“It’s a really short track and you can’t make mistakes. In Brazil you can go wide on most of the tracks and you don’t hit a barrier, but here, if you go out of the track the barriers are very close and you have to take a lot of care.
“I’m looking for a good result, the best possible. Top-10 should be good but we’ll look out for better than that!”