Photo: Niels Broekema / DPPA
Alessandro Giusti’s maiden Formula Regional European Championship win at Paul Ricard would not have been possible without the nightshift his G4 Racing mechanics put in to completely rebuild his car.
The rookie had a hefty shunt in practice on Friday, and as G4’s sporting and technical manager Adrian Munoz explained to Formula Scout: “It was quite a big effort from all the team considering how the event started yesterday, so we had to turn around the situation.
“In collective test two [CT2], ‘Sandro was rolled by another competitor, so we had to work overnight to come back, to have a proper car, at least with four wheels. It was completely destroyed.”
“We had to change all the suspension, the bodywork, even the halo. Unfortunately, there was not a spare halo at the circuit, so we had to disassemble one from our spare car. We left the circuit at 3am, slept for a couple of hours, woke up and were back again at 07:30.”
G4’s team principal Patrick Gnos added: “Basically without this big achievement there is no qualifying and there is no win. I think a good 50% is for the team in this result today.”
Both were impressed by how calmly Giusti approached Saturday qualifying “as if nothing had happened” in practice.
“He did a stunning job because he came back, and he was confident in the work of the team. He used the car in quali like it was the day before.”
The pole lap, Giusti told Formula Scout, was “amazing” but “a bit surprising with the car all rebuilt”.
“He was sure that he didn’t need a slipstream from anyone,” explained Munoz. “He had it quite clear, ‘I know what I need to do to get pole position,’ and that is what he did. You need to manage traffic and ‘Sandro did a brilliant job on that.”
In Saturday’s race, Giusti immediately felt he had “very good pace”.
“I made a very good safety car restart [and] just managed the push-to-pass and the pace and took the fastest lap as well. There was no point for it, but it was just for fun.”
Gnos jokes that his driver’s late fastest lap “was just like Verstappen”, although as Munoz adds, laughing, “I am really happy that he didn’t ask for a pitstop!”
Knowing the effort that had gone into getting the car race-ready, Gnos had feared “every second in quali and the race that the car has [a problem]; a connector not working or something and then we go back”.
But there were no more dramas and Giusti took an untroubled triumph, at a circuit where he had two poles and a win last year in French Formula 4. Does he like Paul Ricard?
“Actually, I don’t like this track so much, I think it is a bit boring, but I am fast here, so I like it,” he admitted to Formula Scout. “It’s a good track for me since the beginning of my single-seater career, so let’s continue like this.”