‘It would be really nice’ – Varrone previews podium chance after Barcelona qualifying

Nico Varrone admitted that his qualifying session in Barcelona was not that smooth despite him qualifying seventh on Friday afternoon.

The session started with just 11 drivers going out on track for push laps, but the Van Amersfoort Racing driver set a personal best that put him in P9.

However, on the final runs, Varrone vaulted himself up to seventh in the timesheets, giving him a strong starting position for both races.

Speaking in the paddock afterwards, the Argentinian driver says changes made in between the first and the second qualifying runs helped turn around his fortunes.

“Honestly it was pretty difficult for my side,” said Varrone. “On the first run with new tyres, the car was pretty out of balance on my side.

“I really struggled to drive the car, it was really oversteery. I had a few moments there which took me out of the confidence I had from Free Practice where the car felt pretty nice.

“I then asked for some changes for the second set and it's only one lap here so luckily the changes worked and I could put the lap together and save the day with a P7, a good lap.

“I think there could have been more in there if the first round was a bit cleaner but I'm really happy with the team performance overall.

“After Monaco it was quite tough for us and now here we are in a good spot, so I feel like we made good progress and we keep working towards the races.”

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This is Varrone’s second top 10 qualifying result of the season, and in his debut campaign in the Championship, he reflected on how he has been improving his one lap pace.

“Obviously, it's not easy,” he explained. “For me everything is new. The way of driving, like in Free Practice, for the first lap I had a lot of references on this track and on European tracks but that is with GTs or LMPs.

“I'm so used to that and it's hard to change it so quickly with the amount of time of testing there is.

“But it's been good. I think we have had good pace, even in Canada, I didn't close my second set the best, but we were really fast. I think the team is giving us a good car to be there and that's the main thing.”

Reflecting further on the session, Varrone talked about how difficult it was to adapt to Qualifying, given how much the track had changed from Free Practice, and also with the switch from the Hard tyres to the Softs.

“It was hot, so the warm-up was really a struggle,” he said. “The warmup is really key in these cars so I think we managed it quite well.

“On my second push, I had cars going for their first push, so it's difficult at times to have a really clean lap.

“But overall I think we were in the first pit box which allowed us to go first and have a cleaner track. Overall I think we handled it pretty good.” Looking ahead to the races, Varrone is set to start P4 in the Sprint Race as well as seventh in the Feature.

When asked about the possibility of a podium, he responded: I feel like the last two rounds we were a bit unlucky starting outside the top ten. So now we are in a good spot for both races and we just need to have a good start.

“It will be a degradation race, so we are really focused on that. For me, coming straight to F2, I feel like maybe a lot of tracks, I don't know what to expect in terms of deg whereas people coming from F3 have more experience on how each track is on tyres.

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“For myself, it's been really useful to come here and do the pre-season testing because it for sure gives me an idea on how the race will be.

“It would be really nice actually to be on the podium but I’m not really focused on that, just focused on the process and doing things right, covering every detail.

“I'm quite happy with how it's going this season and for sure we need to be more consistently in the points. We had some good races and some bad races but I feel quite happy. It's a tough change and I just want to keep getting better myself since when I started so that's the goal for me.”