Fornaroli ‘confident’ of Feature Race chances after finishing seventh in Barcelona Sprint

Leonardo Fornaroli finished seventh in the Barcelona Sprint Race and while happy with the result, believes he could have ended up higher had it not been for the late Safety Car intervention.

The Trident driver now has his eyes set on the Feature Race where he is set to line up in P6 and his plan for the evening is watch back the Sprint to see how he can do even better on Sunday.

“I'm quite happy about my race today,” said Fornaroli. “Maybe I was a bit too cautious on the first lap and I also struggled with understeer a lot as well, so I got past by two cars.

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“Then after the first Safety Car restart, I managed to overtake again and then we were just following each other in the DRS train and in the dirty air it was really difficult to pass.

“I think I did a really good job on tyre management also because the guys in front of me were pushing a lot especially on rear tyres. Two laps before the Safety Car I started to catch them a lot, so I said maybe now my tyre management will be useful to overtake the guys in front but unfortunately, the Safety Car came so we remained P7.

“But I'm actually happy, we collected good points, we got the fastest lap as well, so this shows also that our pace was very good. Let's see for tomorrow, rain is expected so that’s even more interesting, and I will watch the race to see what I can improve for tomorrow.”

Expanding further about being too cautious at the start, Fornaroli added: “Of course I will try to be more aggressive to stay in my position, maybe to overtake some guys in front as well.

“But the main goal is to remain in my position then start to understand the conditions, see what the others are doing and from then start to build the race craft and then maybe overtake some guys in front to take some more points.”

By finishing seventh and by setting the fastest lap, Fornaroli left the Sprint Race with five more points in the bag. This helped him jump ahead of Luke Browning for second in the Championship and close the gap to just leader Gabriele Minì to two points.

However, that is not something that concerns him too much just yet as his main focus is still on collecting as many points as possible from each weekend.

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The Italian now heads into the Feature Race with the goal of doing just that and with rain suspected to be in the air, he admits that could be to their benefit.

“Today in dry conditions, there weren't many overtakes because we were following each other in the DRS and a lot of dirty air as well,” he said.

“Tomorrow if there is rain it will be another story, but I am actually confident also because in testing we had some laps in the rain on the morning of Day 3 and our pace was good and I felt good with the car.

“So now I can't wait to start tomorrow's Feature Race, full focus and let’s try again to score as many points as possible.”