Ticktum praises “big, big step forward,” from DAMS

While he won’t be revealing any of his trade secrets, Dan Ticktum says that himself and DAMS made a number of improvements ahead of Round 5, which led to his joint-highest Qualifying session of the season so far.

The British racer will start the Feature Race from fourth on Saturday, but he does feel that he could have even snatched pole for the team, with a couple more minor adjustments.

Given his and the team’s struggles to get the car setup right for Qualifying so far this season, Ticktum came away from the session feeling pretty satisfied.

“Finally, we seem to have found some pace in Qualifying,” he said. “We managed to switch the tyres on quickly and get it up there. It was a combination of various different things which I won’t go into, because I want to keep them secret.

“I feel like with a couple of balance changes, just in that run, we could have definitely fought for pole as well, so it is a big, big step forward.”

The British racer entered Round 5 on the back of his first win in Formula 2, in the Sprint Race at Silverstone, but he’s now on the hunt for a Feature Race win and will get the chance to do so from the second row of the grid.

“That is the first really strong Qualifying that we’ve had really,” he admitted. “It is definitely going to help me finish a lot higher up in the Feature Race and get more points.”

“This shows that we can be on pole, so now I think this is where I can really go and start to climb up in the championship, and score some really strong points every weekend, but we will see.”