Interview
Richard Verschoor says things are trending in a positive direction for Trident after he finished fifth in the Spa-Francorchamps Feature Race, although he believes they still have more pace to find.
Verschoor came off the back of a weekend in Budapest where he finished third in the Feature before achieving the same result in the shortened Spa Sprint Race six days later.
From eighth on the grid, he made a great start on Sunday and was running in sixth after the first lap.
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Having run long on the Mediums he made the alternative strategy work, pitting for the Softs before coming through the field to finish fifth, helped by a late move on Zane Maloney.
Looking back on a weekend in which he added another trophy to his cabinet and scored valuable points, Verschoor was happy with how things went.
“It's a good weekend,” reflected Verschoor. “Of course, you always want more but looking back at the final few rounds apart from Budapest we can be happy with this weekend.
“P3 and P5 is good points, of course it was half in the first race. Today was a strong performance I think, we still lack quite a bit of pace because I felt like after where I was at the start I should have been on the podium.
“But because the pace was not really strong enough, we didn't manage but still I am very happy with the performance and also the team.”
While Verschoor was the lead Medium tyre runner early on, his plans would have been affected by a couple of early Safety Cars that would have helped protect the Soft tyres early on from degrading.
Talking through it all, Verschoor continued: “I think they would have dropped quite a bit on high fuel but now with all the Safety Cars they didn't have to push that much or not at all and that definitely helped them, and, in the end, I think their strategy was a bit faster.
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“Of course, a better pace could have helped us, and we could have finished P4 but in the end it was like, I'm really happy that the Safety Car came in Lap 6 otherwise it would have been a big disadvantage for us.”
Prior to Budapest, Verschoor had not scored a point in the previous four rounds but since then, he has two podium finishes and now a solid fifth place.
Asked if these are positive signs of Trident heading in the right direction, he replied: “Definitely. I'm very happy with that. Of course we are trying, we know that from three difficult rounds it wasn't good enough.
“So, we have to try something to improve, and I am glad we are trying in the right direction so that's a good thing, so I hope we can keep it up and find some more.”
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Round 11 at Monza is next the calendar after the summer break and Verschoor is hopeful he and Trident can continue their form at a track where they have previous success.
“I'm always positive and Monza is usually a good track for me,” he added. “Last year I was very strong, last year I was very good, and it’s a track that I like, and a track where usually Trident is fast, it's a home race for the team so let’s see.”