Feature: Prema boss on Leclerc, F2 and F1
Prema dominated last year’s GP2 Series in its maiden campaign, claiming nine wins, as Pierre Gasly and Antonio Giovinazzi fought for the crown. This year, while not leading the Teams’ title, it has captured much of the attention through the exploits of Ferrari protégé Charles Leclerc. Ahead of the team’s home event, GPUpdate.net catches up with Prema chief René Rosin.
Prema is perceived as the dominant outfit in Formula 2 but this year has still thrown up a mixed bag, with superb highs and crushing lows. The squad, running two rookies, is third in the standings – behind DAMS and Russian Time – and Rosin admits there have been “too many mistakes”. While Leclerc has been supreme in qualifying and captured five wins, he suffered a cruel suspension failure in Monaco, after an ill-timed pit stop, and exclusions in Budapest (from pole) and Spa-Francorchamps (from victory). Antonio Fuoco, too, has lost out on occasions, most notably with pit dramas at the Hungaroring.
“In the second year, to try and confirm what good you’ve done the previous year is always something difficult,” Rosin explains.
“The others are not sitting down, especially when they have of course six or seven years of experience with the current car.
“So you need always to take care of the small details, to try and do as few mistakes as possible, and unfortunately that didn’t play in our turn.
“I must say this year we made a bit too many mistakes in general, but still I think we’re happy about our performance.
“Charles is doing an amazing job. It’s a bit of a pity for Antonio, because a couple of our mistakes, a couple of his own mistakes also compromised the season so far.
“So let’s try from here to make a turning still, and recovering the points in the championship.”
Leclerc has been the star of Formula 2, opening a 59-point advantage courtesy of wholly impressive performances at each round of this year’s championship. At Spa-Francorchamps he dominated a wet qualifying session, was peerless in the Feature Race, while the post-race exclusion meant he could demonstrate his wheel-to-wheel ability with a stirring comeback in the Sprint Race.
Rosin is in no doubt over the ability of Leclerc, who has a slim possibility of wrapping up the title at Monza this weekend.
“Charles has done eight pole positions out of eight, even if for the FIA it’s just seven, but for me it’s eight!” chuckles the Italian.
“He’s just incredible… in testing we knew his potential, we knew what he was capable of doing, but here and there were some small mistakes.
“At the first moment when the time counted, he didn’t do any mistakes, through all the season he’s always trying to push more, dealing with engineers, trying to always improve, because he knows he cannot sit down based on his own results, and he’s always improving.
“Us, as a team, we never ran on the wet apart from a couple of laps in Bahrain this year and Spielberg Race 2 last year, this was our only condition in wet,” Rosin adds, referring to qualifying last weekend.
“[Race Engineer] Guillaume [Capietto] was remembering not many qualifying in the wet; Charles arrived there [at Spa] and the first lap to qualify 2.5 seconds [faster] – incredible.”
On where and how Leclerc can still smooth rough edges, Rosin explains: “We are really talking about small, small, small details.
“Sometimes he gets nervous when the things are not… he thinks it’s still possible to improve but he doesn’t have the full overview pictures of the situation.
“But still, this way of continued pushing, trying to improve, management of traffic, car set-up, and everything, it’s just even a plus for him, because it continues bringing him to improve.
“After free practice [at Spa] when he got a problem with the extinguisher he was really… not upset, but he was really saying, ‘Oh my lap was s**t and I was not able to get 100 per cent, it will be difficult in qualifying’, then he enters the qualifying and boom P1, so there’s nothing more to say about him, he should be in that [F1] paddock.”
Leclerc’s options to enter the senior paddock currently appear restricted to Sauber, highlighting the problems facing young drivers. Prema has run talented drivers, such as Gasly, Giovinazzi, Felix Rosenqvist and Lance Stroll in recent years, but only the well-funded reigning F3 champion has graduated full-time. While rightly conceding that it’s “not possible” for drivers to make the step every year, there is an acceptance that “we need to find a way to bring these drivers to go to Formula 1. I think something needs to be changed, 20 cars we know that it’s not the perfect number in Formula 1, it needs to be a bit more.”
But would Prema be interested in making it 22 cars? Rosin emits a long, laugh-injected no, before explaining: “Formula 1 again is a dream for everybody, from drivers, Team Principals, engineers, mechanics… everybody wants to go to Formula 1.
“On the other hand, you need to have the right conditions. If you don’t have the financial background, or if you don’t have manufacturers behind [you], it’s difficult to compete versus the likes of Mercedes, Ferrari, Renault, Red Bull.
“Look what the small teams have done, they really struggled: Hispania, Manor, Caterham, so that’s not the way of doing it.
“If the regulations change, and they would allow customer cars or something like that, in that case it could make sense, but still you need to have a huge financial background because a normal team coming from junior formula…
“We have 55 people running four teams now between Formula 4, Formula 3 and Formula 2, you pass into [Formula 1], and you have a minimum of 200 [people] at the team, just for one team, so it’s at least four-times bigger, it’s a huge change also of mentality, of infrastructure, of system, of method, so it’s a huge step.
“You want Formula 1 to have state of the art technology but you want Formula 1 to be accessible for smaller teams. You need to have a bit of compromise; now [the mentality is] to continue pushing for technology, so the gap [between F1 and F2] is really big.”
The future of Formula 2 has been bubbling under the surface for several months. The GP2/11, in use in the category since 2011, will make way for a new Dallara-designed, Pirelli-shod universal car, to be unveiled tomorrow (Thursday). F1’s new owner, Liberty Media, has also taken a keener interest than under previous ownership, with one or two new teams mooted for 2018, hopefully leading to a brighter future for the secondary division.
“I think if there is a way to get a great link with Formula 1, it will be better for the Formula 2 teams,” Rosin ponders on Liberty’s ambitions.
“Because at the end now you rely of course on drivers who will pay the budget, if you can get a sponsor you can get even a driver who has less budget, but can maybe sometimes more potential, so all this kind of stuff can be balanced.
“I must say, I appreciate as well that the F2 organisation always keeps the paddock [above] 20 cars, because in other categories where you don’t have the participation agreement; that’s something that gives as well a bit of credibility to the championship for me, you go to see the 3.5 now and they have 11 cars… I love the championship, we participated there, but sorry guys, there’s time to say, ‘Sorry… it’s over’.”
With Formula 1 and Formula 2 aligned, the final sticking point is the Formula 3/GP3 quandary. Contracts are in place meaning that nothing will change for 2018, but discussions are underway for 2019.
“For my point of view they need to be merged,” he says.
“I’m fully of the state that there are two sick championships, there are some plus and minus in each championship.
“The best way for me is to get like MotoGP: F3, F2, F1 into the same weekend.
“We should use all this kind of benefit to get all the ladder to Formula 1 altogether, because you can create the link with Formula 1, create a link with all the teams, create a link between drivers, engineers and everybody.”
Source :http://feeds.gpupdate.net
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