Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd
Marta Garcia emerged triumphant from the first ever F1 Academy round at Spielberg, winning both race one and three.
The Prema driver was proud of the job done. Nevertheless, the former W Series star acknowledged there is still work to be done in order to lead the field in future rounds.
“It’s really nice to be the first ever person to be first in the F1 Academy championship, the first race, so I’m really happy,” Garcia told the media after her second win.
“We’ve done a lot of work to get here. We still have a lot of work to do, but I’m really, really happy with the job, with how we went. We also had some difficulties, but we overcame them, so just really happy with it.”
The Spaniard admitted she felt nervous ahead of race one, but calmed down once it kicked off.
“When you start the first race, like I’ve not been racing in any place apart from last year. Obviously, you’re a bit more nervous on the start. So I was a bit more nervous in race one. Race two it was like ‘okay, I’ve done it once, so let’s do it again’.
“Starting from P8, it gives you less pressure even though you know you have to do well and get the points that you can. I didn’t want to risk it too much on that race, to be fair. Finally, I was P7. I got two points, which is quite okay, even though I could have maybe risked a bit more. But we’re happy with this.”
Formula Scout asked Garcia about her safer approach to the reversed-grid race two and whether that would change in the next rounds where race three will take place a day after race two.
“With the team, we spoke about it. It’s obviously the first race of the season. You don’t want to risk it too much. I think having gotten P1 on the first race, for the second race, starting P8, we also had to see what would happen, how it would work.
“We didn’t want to risk it. We have a lot of races, three races per weekend. It’s a lot of racing. So we still have a lot of racing to go to risk it more. That’s how we wanted to keep it for this one. For next races, I’m sure that I’m going to be taking more risks on the second race.
“Also we don’t know how it’s going to be like. Maybe I will be starting P2 because I was not that good in [qualifying for] the first race, we don’t know. It’s three races, you’ve got to be quite good in the first one and third one because those are the ones that give more points, and then try to do the best in the second race, which gives [10] points.”
F1 Academy’s second round is this weekend at Valencia’s Ricardo Tormo circuit, which Garcia is “actually looking forward to” as a “home race”.