Hello, and welcome to the press conference for the Spanish V-Prix at Jerez! Joining us today we have Rai Miyamoto of Ocelot Japan Racing, Adam Blocker of FIRST Motorsport, Ben Faz of Arrow Mechanics, and Dylan Lopez of Lopez FV Team. Reporter: We'll kick off today with Arrow's Ben Faz. Firstly, sincere condolances to the entire Arrow team for Takahashi's retirement last time out. Could you talk us through the atmosphere in the garage after the race?
Ben Faz: Thanks, that's generally been the consensus of the paddock, just a lot of disappointment generally. It was bound to happen, it was going too well to be true.... as for the garage... not sure everyone's taken it so well. Yakumi's back at it already, he's never one to be kept down for long. R: A positive you could take away from France is that you qualified fairly easily for the race. Do you think AMR moving out of Q1 helps you in terms of getting through that session? BF: I suppose that is a positive to take from that race yes.... I don't think there's that much of a delta between AMR and North Star in the Q1 battle, I think its more how Meteor and Cheema prioritise their development between this and next year. R: Thanks Ben, we'll return to you later. Going to you, Dylan, yet another podium for the team, 5th this season in 6 races, and Wagner's first in years. How has his attitude been since the retirement announcement, has he been more motivated? Dylan Lopez: Wagner’s always had the motivation to get the best out of himself and the car. We knew he was on when he snagged pole at Fuji, but unfortunately up until last round it never really came together for him. Better late than never to get his first podium for the team but it’s one that he particularly deserves, and now the challenge and motivation is to go out and go one better next time. R: You've got yourself a juicy gap over Mathershaw at the moment in the battle for second. As their customer team, would it mean a lot to end the season ahead of them? DL: It’d be very nice to come out on top of the factory works team, who have once again provided us with a top notch engine this year. I think Arthur and I would agree on one thing, that our drivers socially distance when fighting for position, unlike a certain incident we don’t talk about.. R: For legal reasons it's best we don't discuss that further... anyway, Rai! With Thunder's 9th place in the last race, Lucas are now ahead of you on points in the battle for 6th. Would you say Lucas are your main rivals this year, possibly Ingram as well? Rai Miyamoto: Hard to say really. We are mainly focusing on ourselves rather than what rivals are doing at the moment. R: Since his return, Giodano has struggled while Ryan has really stepped up so far, taking the team leader role. Why do you think that is, and were you expecting it to be the opposite? RM: Ryan has been fantastic and very pleasing for us to see his development and progress. We know what Puccio can do, so there still faith. R: Ocelot haven't been on the podium since 2018, but you have two top 6 finishes so far. With more than half the season left, do you think a return to the podium is possible? RM: Not sure, we will need to see how things develop. R: Well, thanks anyways. Kept you waiting Adam, apologies, but getting to you now, you've had one of your drivers ending up well down in the results this year for various reasons. Do you think you would be much higher in the standings with more consistency? Adam Blocker: I think we could be in the fight for at least 4th in constructors’ with some more consistent results. 18 points for Perez at Australia - a result he was on for with little attrition - would have swung it a lot by itself. And really we’ve had everything from driver mistakes, unreliability, and things out of our control entirely. R: Apart from a great weekend in Britain, it's been a rather underwhelming season for Hoskins. Is there anything in particular that's holding him back, perhaps qualifying? AB: The guys are working the best they can to figure out why Will has been struggling a bit to find pace at some of the races this year. Like you say, some places it has just been Q pace and catching traffic during Q - but there have also been a couple races where race pace hasn’t been what Will expects from himself. Hopefully it is something where we can tune the car to be more comfortable for him over the season. R: Spain has been an awkward race for FIRST - 2 podiums but no other points finishes. Would you be happy this year to come away with a podium and a driver outside the points? AB: It’s always nice to have a driver on the podium so I would be ok with that obviously - but ultimately we just want the most points possible for the constructors’. And too many times this year we’ve had two cars solidly in the points and then something happens. A solid double points finish would be good for the morale and momentum on both sides of our garage and that’s a realistic result I think we should expect. R: Thanks for the detailed answers, best of luck for the race. We've got another question for you Dylan, last year you started the season towards the front, and while you tailed off, you've stayed there so far this year. What is it that the team have done differently over the last two seasons? DL: We learned a lot about developing the right aspects of the car at the right time of the year. At times we were throwing upgrades left right and centre on the car but yielded minimal results. This season on the other hand we’ve been more thorough and calculated on our R&D program and it’s safe to say that so far we’ve been going in the right direction. R: Definitely great to see Lopez be more consistent this year. Just quickly jumping back to you Ben, into your second year in FV now, what would you like the team to have achieved by the end of 2021? Is something like a points finish or getting out of Q1 a target? BF: Points is always the target, I think that result will give us the hope and motivation to hopefully launch a few treks into the points this season, if not we'll see where it takes us. R: It'll be interesting for sure to see if you can get your first points. Alright, time for a question for everyone - over the past few years, tyre strategies have played a big part in some very surprising results here. In general, how do you all go about deciding your strategies? What are the factors you consider when making your decision? BF: Of course, you'll have to see our strategy when you see it, although I don't think we've gone against the crowd this race, Jerez, as unpredictable reliability wise as it is, doesn't often void too many surprises with the overtaking quality, there's around 1 or 2 good spots for cars of equal pace to have a battle really, we see large periods of the race stagnating and that's where we hope to gain time. DL: Going against the grain is something that seems to work for us once a season. Kangur last year at Fuji and Wagner last time out. If we think there’s a viable chance that we can get out and, more or less pull a rabbit out of the hat then we’re prepared to take that gamble. There are other circuits such as here at Jerez which provide their own strategic challenges. At tracks like Jerez where Qualifying is almost king, it’s sometimes both the easiest and hardest race to pick a strategy for in order to beat our rivals. RM: Now that would be telling AB: We build simulations that try to accurately account for the tire properties of the different compounds (at least as we understand them), weather, overtaking difficulty, and other circuit characteristics. However, like anything you simulate, it’s sensitive to the inputs changing. So we also do sensitivity studies on each variable that we model to help us make a judgement call on what compound or compounds are likely to work. If there are multiple we like we’ll likely split camp based on driver/race engineer preference. That’s part of what makes the racing exciting, the fact that its difficult to predict,never goes exactly as you planned and it’s really just an educated guess. R: Some great answers there! And one... umm, we'll move on and wrap this up. As always, final question for you guys: what are you hopes and expectations for this weekend? BF: Not sure, I hope its as good as last weekend but that could be a shallow hope, I think Zander was closer to where our car should've been last weekend. DL: Going 1 better than last weekend would be a dream result. It’d also be very nice if Elroy can continue to climb the standings, Allar can maintain 2nd, and we continue to build a buffer over Mathershaw in the Constructors. RM: No particular expectations let’s just see how things develop during practice and qualifying and we’ll go from there. AB: Double points finish is the expectation and the hope. R: And with that we'll call it a day. Thanks to you four for attending and to the fans watching around the world. We'll be back later with practice around the Jerez circuit soon!
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