Tatiana Calderón brought the curtain down on her first full season racing in Japan’s Super Formula series in last weekend’s finale at Fuji Speedway.
The Colombian racer was unlucky to have to start the final race of the 2020 campaig
n on Sunday from the pitlane due to a problem with her car’s hydraulics system, which meant she couldn’t take the formation lap and immediately left her a lap off the lead.
But that setback didn’t stop Tatiana putting in her most accomplished race performance of the season, as she ended up with the fifth-fastest lap of the race – a clear demonstration of her and the ThreeBond Drago Corse team’s potential to be in the fight for points.
Her qualifying effort on Sunday morning was also around 1.5 seconds faster than her best time from the pre-season test at Fuji back in March, before the season was placed on hold amid the COVID-19 pandemic, further evidence of how far Tatiana has progressed.
Racing in a country she had never visited before this year, with a one-car team returning from three years away from Super Formula, Tatiana faced arguably the biggest challenge of her career so far. She also had to deal with the additional challenge of missing two races early in the season due to travel restrictions, reducing her to schedule to just five races.
But with her professionalism and never-give-up attitude, she made a big impression not only on the team itself but also on the wider Super Formula paddock, and as a result can look back on her first year in the championship with a great deal of satisfaction.
Tatiana Calderón: “It was unfortunate to lose the chance to score points with the issue at the start. The only way we could solve it was to start from the pits and by the time I got going we had already lost a lap. But the positive point is that the pace was pretty good during the race. I set the fifth-fastest lap which shows that we could have been in the group fighting for positions, so I’m really happy about that. I felt much more confident with the car and I think straight away from FP1 on Saturday I was a second quicker than I had been back in March for pre-season testing, which just goes to show how far the team and I have progressed since the start of the year. I think we were working in the right way this weekend and it’s just a shame to lose that chance to see how far we could have got up the order in the race, but that’s motorsport sometimes. I’d like to thank everyone at the ThreeBond Drago Corse team, Honda, Bandero and Koe for their support this season.”
Tatiana is staying on at Fuji Speedway for two days of post-season testing on Tuesday and Wednesday to round off her on-track action for the season. An announcement on her plans for the 2021 season will be made in due course.
