Ghiotto: “After such a bad period for me, P2 feels good”

Hapless luck, bitter disqualification, and, by his own admission, mistakes made, Luca Ghiotto’s title bid has had its fair share of hitches in recent rounds, with the driver suffering a lull since his strong start to the season. Having achieved two podium finishes in Spielberg, the UNI-Virtuosi man is sensing that his season is back on track.

Two P2 finishes in Austria saw the Italian not just return to the podium for the first time since Barcelona, but also the points. A damning statistic that illustrates just how tough the last few rounds have been for him.

“I’m definitely pleased with that,” he began. “Overall, it has been a good weekend. Of course, I would have liked to have won and that is always the goal, but after such a bad period for me, P2 feels good for sure. It’s definitely a step forward compared to Monaco and France, I just need to keep it up now.”

It all began to unravel in Monaco when he was disqualified from the Feature Race for using an illegal rack stop thickness. Three further pointless races followed, two of which he didn’t even finish.

Mostly, the car hasn’t lacked pace, and while the Italian will have found little solace in that, it provided him with a springboard to bounce back – he just needed his luck to change.

“I think that the car has always had good pace, maybe some rounds more, some rounds less, but if you look at the season overall, there has not been one round where we have been slow.

“Bahrain and Barcelona have been our best rounds in term of pace. In Baku, we were quick, but I made a mistake. In Monaco, we were P2 but were disqualified. So, the speed has always been there.

“France was not super for us - for me anyway, it was good for my teammate. But, even there the pace was quite good - good enough for the top five at least. The results have been due to other things, as opposed to speed.”

The short, three-hour long journey back to Italy will have been much more pleasurable for the UNI-Virtuosi racer, who is now targeting further success in Silverstone.

“Going home for a week with two podiums in my mind is much better than when I went home with a zero after France, so that is good. Now, I don’t want to leave anything on the table, whether it is in training, or on simulator work, or whatever, I want to be as prepared as possible.

“The only thing that we can do is to keep on pushing hard and to keep on scoring points. What other drivers do is not our job at the end of the day, I just want to take each race as it comes and try to score as many points as possible. We will see in Abu Dhabi where we are."

Ghiotto currently sits fourth in the drivers’ standings, ten points off DAMS driver Sérgio Sette Câmara, ahead of Round 7 of the campaign at Silverstone, in under two weeks’ time.