On January 14, members of the DS Penske team had little time to congratulate themselves after Jean-Eric Vergne and Stoffel Vandoorne placed 6th and 8th respectively in Mexico City. As soon as the race debriefing concluded, the team's engineers left the circuit to catch the first plane to Paris. Why so much hurry?
“For some of our strategists, leaving Mexico on a Saturday night was the only way to be in the office on Monday morning,” explains Eugenio Franzetti, DS Performance Director. “When two races are just one weekend apart, we have a maximum of five or six days of work before having to leave for the next round. After Mexico City, the first race of the season, there was an incompressible amount of time of around three days to analyze the data so as not to leave anything to chance. This work is fundamental to improving our cars and making them even better in the future.
“At the same time, we had to prepare for this weekend, which mobilized another part of our resources. Last week our simulator was used constantly. First with our test drivers to fine-tune the mapping, then with Jean -Eric and Stoffel, who worked flat out on Thursday and Friday to get familiar with the Diriyah track. After that, everyone had a weekend off and then we had to fly to Riyadh at the beginning of the week.”
Photo by: DPPI
Stoffel Vandoorne, DS Penske
Drivers in good spirits
It is true that Vergne and Vandoorne demonstrated in Mexico that the DS E-TENSE FE23s were up to the task, with good potential against the Jaguars and Porsches, the same enemies as last season.
“I'm very happy with what my car gave me in the first race, especially because I know we had the potential to do better,” Vergne said. “In Mexico City, the way the day went, I wasn't able to exploit the full potential of my car. But after all the work done last week and given the configuration of the Diriyah circuit, we arrive confident and very determined.”
This trust could also come from a more usual team composition for the two DS Penske regulars, with Vandoorne continuing to build his relationship with his new race engineer and Vergne reuniting with his “historic” race engineer, absent in Mexico. Will this meticulous preparation and unfailing motivation allow the Franco-American team to get close or even on the podium this weekend? The first clues will arrive on Friday evening, at the end of the first of the two races.
In Diriyah the temperature variations will certainly be smaller than in Mexico, but the fact that testing and qualifying will take place during the day, while the race will take place at sunset, is still a particular feature. In both cases, the start will be at 6.03pm local time, or 4.03pm in Europe.
Photo by: DPPI
Jean-Eric-Vergne, DS Penske, DS E-Tense FE23
#Penske #virtuous #circle #Saudi #Arabia
