"Never say never,” Aitken looking up despite tough start to 2020

2020 was supposed to be the start of a new dawn for Jack Aitken. Refreshed and re-booted, ready for a renewed title challenge. Swapping the Renault junior driver programme for the Williams’ equivalent, while remaining with the Campos outfit with whom he’d enjoyed much success in 2019. But so far, it hasn’t played out that way.

The Briton has taken just eight points from the first eight races of the season, and the title bid he had planned has begun to unravel. Despite this, Aitken walked away from Silverstone with a smile of sorts, confident that Campos are beginning to get on top of their issues.

Aitken took the final points’ position in the Sprint Race, rising from 13th to eighth, and praised his team for their hard work behind the scenes.

“It is a really, really difficult question,” he replied when asked to pinpoint a reason for the tough opening rounds. “F2 is famous for how difficult it is to really be in the sweet spot all of the time.

“For sure, we started on the backfoot, and with only three days of testing and such a long break until the first race, all of these things were adding up to make it a really difficult start for us.

“I do believe that we are getting closer, it is just a bit hard because the results don’t really show that, but I think we are getting towards a solution.

“The guys are working super, super hard, and when it comes to things like the pitstops, we are still one of the best in the pitlane, so it’s not all bad and hopefully we get back to winning ways soon.”

While he may be taking the positives, Aitken’s tricky weekend was in stark contrast to his 2019 visit to Silverstone, where he took a historic Sprint Race victory.

Despite that, Aitken is pleased to be returning to Silverstone again in just under a weeks’ time for Round 5 of the campaign, handing him another chance at getting things right at his home event.

“It was quite challenging,” he admitted. “We had a decent quali. We could have been in the top five quite easily I think, but as in previous rounds, we struggled a bit more in the races.

“We made a small improvement on Sunday, and managed to just sneak into the points, which is nice, but we have a lot of work to do. The positive is, we are back here next week. I really love driving the track and it also means that we get a chance to learn as much as possible.

“We will just take it race-by-race. If we can finish the season with a bunch of Feature Race wins and pole positions, I think we would be pretty happy with that.”