Tatiana Calderón heads to her ‘home’ round of the FIA Formula 2 championship at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya optimistic of scoring her first points of the season.
The Alfa Romeo F1 test driver will be looking to rebound from a promising but ultimately unrewarding second round of the season in Baku, where a mechanical problem meant that a strong opportunity to finish comfortably inside the points was lost.
Barcelona, which has continuously hosted F1’s Spanish Grand Prix since 1991, is a venue that Tatiana is very familiar with, having raced there in GP3 and Euroformula Open in previous seasons. She also spent three days at the 4.655-km track earlier this year with her BWT Arden team in F2 pre-season testing.
A resident of Spain since her European F3 Open days, Tatiana rates the track among her favourites and, with F2 not currently featuring a round in South America on its calendar, she considers it a de facto home race – providing her with an extra source of motivation to perform.
Her task in the feature race will be made harder by the three-place grid penalty she is carrying from causing a collision in the sprint race in Baku last month, but the Colombian rising star remains convinced finishing inside the top 10 is achievable based on her race pace at the Azerbaijan street track.
Tatiana Calderón: “I’m looking forward to racing in Barcelona after a disappointing weekend in Baku. I think we have a good car for the race, and in Baku we managed to solve some of the issues we had in Bahrain. Hopefully that will pay off in Barcelona, where we struggled in pre-season testing. Conditions have changed a lot since then, and I like the circuit a lot. As I’ve lived in Spain for more than eight years I call this my home race, and I look forward to hopefully scoring my points of the season there.”
BARCELONA TIMETABLE (Times in CET, subject to change)
Friday 10 May Practice – 13:00 Qualifying – 16:55
Saturday 11 May Race 1 – 16:40
Sunday 12 May Race 2 – 11:30
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