Vergne: It’s been a positive start

Jean-Eric Vergne had his usual meet the media session this afternoon in the beautiful Sakhir paddock and it was time for some retrospection, firstly looking back just a few days to China and then, more of an overview of the first three Grands Prix of his Formula 1 career.

“I think the team understood what happened in China in terms of the aero updates we brought there and we will be keen to see in Free Practice here in Bahrain tomorrow, if we can make it work better. I feel the engineers have found some good solutions to help us get the best out of the package. By Friday night, I should be able to say if we are going to have a good weekend, or at the least a better one than in Shanghai.

“Looking back at the first three races of my F1 career, I cannot say I am satisfied with how everything has gone, but that is partly because I am never satisfied with myself. To be honest, I am not looking at these past three races anymore and it makes no sense for me to judge my own performance. I just want to drive better races and score more points, which is in a way, an easy mentality to have and a good straightforward approach. It means I want to learn from every race, but not over analyse them. If I had to evaluate the first trio of races, I suppose I would say it’s been a positive start, during which I scored my first F1 points. I also think that in terms of outright speed I did a good job and raced hard, as well as performing well in the rain. The bad points for me, would start with qualifying: in Australia it was not too bad, although a slight mistake meant I missed out on Q3, even if everyone said I did well given it was my first ever race. In Malaysia I made a mistake on my fast lap which knocked me out immediately and I would take China out of the equation as my car was rather slow and I could do nothing with it.”

The French driver is also looking past the Bahrain race to the weeks ahead. “Now, after this fourth round of the championship, we will have the Mugello test and that will be useful for us, because it can be difficult to do your testing on Friday of a race weekend, a fact that was perfectly illustrated in China.”