Charouz Racing System prepares for the second round of its FIA Formula 3 season in official testing sessions at Jerez

Going towards Round 2 at Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari in Imola, the FIA Formula 3 grid is up for two days of official testing sessions at Jerez de la Frontera, Spain. On a rainy first day, Charouz Racing System confirmed the potential displayed in the pre-season tests held in Bahrain, despite a tough race weekend prevented László Tóth, Ayrton Simmons and Francesco Pizzi from scoring their first points in Round 1.

The Czech squad has begun its work at the Andalusian track improve on the foundations that were laid during the first round of the championship in Bahrain, carrying on the schedule despite the bad weather. In fact, both the morning session and the afternoon session were heavily affected by the rain, which allowed the drivers to go out on slick tires only in the last 30 minutes of the day.

With a track condition that at the end of the day made the lap times actually not very indicative, the fastest for the team was Pizzi, whose 1:35.212 got him in P12. His teammates Simmons and Tóth were not far behind, with the Englishman in P14 with a 1:37.379 and the Hungarian in P15 with a 1:39.526. The teams will hit the track again tomorrow, starting at 9:00am local time for the second and final day of these official tests.

Antonín Charouz, team owner
“The weather wasn’t ideal but in the end we managed to call it a day with good reasons to smile. The drivers were happy about how the car felt in the few last laps on slick tyres and also in wet conditions. We gathered some extra data that can be useful further in the season in case of a race under the rain. We look forward to keep up with the schedule tomorrow with a sunnier day and leave Spain with confidence”.

László Tóth
“Difficult day today with tricky conditions because of the rain especially in the morning, but when it started to drying up in the afternoon we managed to get quite a lot of laps and we started to improve. I’m sure tomorrow the weather will be better and we’ll be able to focus on keeping improving our performance”.

Ayrton Simmons
“It was a very productive day for me, I had to learn the track and it was a very good experience. It was also my first wet run in this car, which proved to be very handy. We’ve tried a few things and some of them worked out, hopefully we’ll have a dry track tomorrow but anyway I’m happy about this first day”.

Francesco Pizzi
“A really tricky day today with a lot of weather changes, we went from wet to dry to wet many times but in the end we’ve been able to get a run on slicks. I couldn’t get the run I wanted because there wasn’t enough time but I think overall it wasn’t bad at all, we improved a lot, we were competitive and the car felt good so it was a good day”.