Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd
Roman Stanek’s rookie Formula 2 season has got off to a difficult start. Notwithstanding, the Trident driver is not giving up.
He has scored a singular point in the first eight races of 2023, primarily held on temporary circuits, and hopes to turn around his fortunes as the series enter the European tour.
“As you can see from the races, we are struggling. There is nothing that I can say,” Stanek told Formula Scout during F2’s in-season test at Barcelona last week.
“But that’s why we are testing here, and we are testing new items to be able to improve ourselves. Hopefully it will work.
“Me and my team-mate Clem [Novalak], we are not in the position that we should be. We have to score much more points because that’s basically where we are not belonging. So we are trying new things and hopefully we are going in the right direction.”
The FIA Formula 3 race-winner affirmed that continuing with Trident for his step up to F2 this year has “helped a lot” and believes that the team’s work ethic will eventually pay off.
“It’s already the second year that I’m with Trident. I like the atmosphere in the team. I think we are one of the best in the pre-race preparation, with the simulator, the pre-event meetings, with all the stuff that we do.
“Now we just have to find the right direction, how to extract the best from the package we have and how we can improve it to be able to place ourselves in the top six or seven in qualifying.”
Stanek reckons that by qualifying within the top 10 he could finish in the points more often despite suffering with race pace.
“Once you start in the front, then with the pack is much easier to go forward and from there on once we can qualify there, I’m sure we will stay there. So we just have to keep working,” he said.
“We still have 10 races [rounds] to go. So we have plenty possibilities to score many points. We finally are back in Europe on some of my favourite tracks. So I’m really looking forward to it.”
This weekend the F2 paddock heads to Imola, where Stanek has won in Euroformula and F3, then the eight rounds after that are all in Europe and ones he has experienced before bar Monaco.
Stanek believes that knowing the tracks that F2 is heading to might help him to improve his results, but he is aware that it will be a similar situation for the whole grid.
“I think so, but also for the others. So I just have to be tiny better in adapting and extracting the best than the others.”