Promising Pace Goes Unrewarded in Barcelona
Round 3 - Barcelona-Catalunya - Report
Hitech’s weekend in Barcelona-Catalunya showed strong underlying pace across all sessions, although the final results did not fully reflect the team’s potential following a difficult qualifying session and a challenging Feature Race.
Friday’s practice session provided the first opportunity to evaluate performance in the very hot conditions this weekend, with the team gathering useful data and confirming general correlation with pre-season testing and simulator work. This provided a solid reference point heading into qualifying, but the team was unable to fully extract single-lap performance when it mattered, leaving Fionn McLaughlin 25th, Michael Shin 27th and Jin Nakamura 30th on the grid.
Sprint Race
All three drivers made progress during the 21-lap Sprint Race, moving forward from their starting positions in a competitive midfield battle.
A lengthy Safety Car period in the closing stages compressed the field and set up a short sprint to the finish. Jin made the strongest gains of the trio, climbing 12 positions to finish 18th. Fionn finished 21st, while Michael recovered to 25th despite front wing damage from hitting a bollard.
The race highlighted the car’s underlying pace, and served as a reminder of what is possible with improved starting positions.
Feature Race
The Feature Race proved more difficult, with the team unable to convert race pace into representative results.
Jin’s race was impacted by a five-second penalty for a Virtual Safety Car infringement, which prevented him from capitalising fully on his pace. He finished 22nd.
Fionn sustained damage following contact, requiring an unscheduled pit stop for repairs before rejoining to finish 26th.
Michael’s race was also compromised following early contact in the midfield, leaving him with damage that affected performance for the remainder of the race. He finished 29th.
While the weekend did not deliver results that reflected the underlying pace of the car, there were consistent positives that the team will carry into the next round at Spielberg on 26-28 June.
