Pourchaire optimistic his and ART’s work pre-season has paid off after dominating Day 1

15 February 2023

Théo Pourchaire is brimming with confidence in himself and his ART Grand Prix team’s potential after the opening day of pre-season testing. The Frenchman got his 2023 Formula 2 campaign off to the perfect start in Sakhir, ending the first day’s running as fastest overall.

Back in the car for the first time since Yas Marina last November, the Sauber Academy junior was at the top of the timing sheets in both the morning and afternoon sessions. In 2023, Pourchaire is part of the French team’s line-up for the fourth consecutive season and his third in F2.

He believes that their familiarity and strong partnership has been crucial in enabling them to assess and tackle the areas that held them back from snatching the title last year.

“It was an amazing feeling because the last time I drove was in Abu Dhabi, so it was a long time ago. It’s a very nice feeling to drive a race car again and in a good race car like Formula 2’s. It’s been a very good day because the lap times were very good as well – P1 in the morning, P1 in the afternoon and P1 overall. So, it's a very nice thing and I'm very happy. I love this track as well!”

He added: “I know the team very well and the team knows me very well too so we could work on my weaknesses during the winter, which was a very good thing, and I hope it will work during the season. Now it’s only the pre-season test, but we can see some progress and we will try to test a lot of things on Days 2 and 3 because we’re here to try a lot of things.

“I’m sure we can do something really good this year because I know this team very well. They are very competitive, and they did a lot of work as well to improve themselves after the mistakes they made in the past and myself as well, I made a lot of mistakes.”

Pourchaire notched 54 laps on the board and combined with his rookie teammate Victor Martins’ efforts, the pair nudged ART just over the 100-lap mark.

Whilst enjoying himself back behind the wheel, he displayed strong pace across his both one-lap pace and his longer race runs. His quickest effort of 1:42.165, set in the twilight of the second session, put him over a tenth clear of Van Amersfoort Racing’s Richard Verschoor.

Targeting another two days of smooth running before the ‘23 campaign gets underway, Pourchaire says their target is to align their run plans to gather the optimal data for the season opener. By focusing on longer runs in the midday heat and Qualifying form under the floodlights, he is sure there’s still time to find out on track.

“In the morning, I just started to get used to the car again and to the track. We had a small steering issue on the car at the beginning of the morning, which we managed to change. In the afternoon we did our first race simulation and one Quali simulation with the prime tyres and one set of option tyres in the late afternoon.

“In the first session of the day, we will work on the race pace because it will be very warm temperatures and that’s what the race will be, so we try to do the same. In the afternoon, we do our Qualifying practices with two sets of soft tyres and low fuel, and I’ll try to extract the maximum out of myself and out of the car.

“Last year, I struggled a lot in Qualifying, so it’s a key point for me this year. I need to work on that and I’m sure I will improve; I understood a bit already yesterday and now it will only get better.”