Sicard: 2019 title “memory for life”

DAMS finished the season as they started it, with a Feature Race victory. But, of the six wins achieved throughout the 24 races in 2019, Sérgio Sette Câmara’s on Saturday felt the most significant, and not purely because it was the one which sealed them the Teams’ title. Manager François Sicard said as much after the race, as he dedicated the Championship to their late team founder, Jean-Paul Driot.

With 16 podiums to back up the race wins, and both of their drivers in the top four, there’s no doubting that they earned it, and while they may well have had more intense title fights in the past, the inter-team pressure they placed upon themselves to do so, felt much greater than normal. Sealing the title with a win was the perfect way to honour their great friend, and team boss, Driot.

“Maybe we have had more difficult titles to get, but this one is really the one we will keep in our memory for life,” an emotional Sicard explained. “It has been a tough season for us, with the passing of Jean-Paul (Driot). We really wanted to have it this year.

“Competition was very tight and very hard, we had very good competitors in front of us, so it was not an easy task. All of the team members really wanted to get this title and both drivers have been awesome with us.

“They were really thinking of the team, as much as themselves, so it was a really nice team effort from everybody. To clinch the title with such a nice win is something so special for us and there was no better way to pay tribute to our team founder Jean-Paul.”

They didn’t make things easy for themselves though. Sette Câmara had dominated Free Practice and Qualifying, but he suffered an uncharacteristically slow start to the race, which dropped him as far as fifth before his pit stop on Lap 7.

It then appeared as if the team had opted for the wrong strategy. Nobuharu Matsushita had chosen to start on the softs and built up what looked like an unassailable lead in first, ahead of his change near the end of the race.

This could have seen heads drop, but Sette Câmara and his team kept on fighting, as he charged back through the field. The decision was eventually proven correct, as Matsushita’s tyres waned, and when he finally did stop, Sette Câmara fired into the lead.

“He had a bit of wheel spin at the start,” Sicard explained. “This jeopardized the result a little bit. He did very well though and pushed very hard. Both the team and the driver did very well.”

Things weren’t any smoother for Nicholas Latifi either. Having qualified below Sette Camara, the Canadian was given the second pit stop. Ordinarily, he would have changed a lap later, but with his tyres heavily degraded, they opted for an ambitious double stop.

“We didn't have so much luck with Nicky,” Sicard conceded. “We tried to do a double stack, because we thought he would lose more time doing one extra lap. I think we were wrong, but he pushed very hard and he recovered. I think normally with this mistake, he would have finished P10, but he recovered to P7 with an amazing race.

“I was happy with the pitstops because a double stack is very tricky for the mechanics, and they managed to do it in 5.3s for Nicky and 4.3s for Sérgio, which is quite amazing. It really was a team performance yesterday and I think the way we got the title was really important.”