The Melbourne teenager, now based in the UK, set the fastest time early in the afternoon session on the opening day of the test. A time that could only be beaten in the final laps of the session by Christian Lundgaard, which saw Piastri dropped to P2.
“The car was very good and I adapted to the new surface and changes they made to the circuit for the upcoming F1 race.
It’s never nice being beaten in the last few minutes by 0.001s but my pace was strong all day and I found the extra pace on the new tyre runs which is the key to qualifying these cars. Overall, the team is
very happy with today’s result.”
The second day of the test saw Piastri end the morning session in P5 after focusing on race simulations. He then jumped up to P2 in the afternoon session, which was cut short by a red flag in the closing stages.
“The morning session was pretty good, we were trying a few things and doing some longer runs which is what most teams are doing so it was good to finish in P5.” said Piastri.
“The afternoon was going very well, we were the fastest on used tyres and then Colombo went out on new tyres early which dropped me to P2.”
“There was a red flag just as I rolled out into pit lane for my final new tyre run. It was a long delay and there wasn’t enough time left to bring the tyres up to temperature so we just parked the car and saved those tyres for next week at Nurburgring.”
“The Arden Motorsport team did a great job with the car, my engineer Ben is happy with the setup options and I felt that I could maintain my speed and consistency on the race runs. It gives us a lot of confidence for the first race here in a couple of weeks.”
Formula Renault 2.0 Eurocup teams have one final official test at Nurburgring, Germany next week followed by the opening race of the championship at Paul Ricard, April 13-15.