François Sicard: “We have not lost our know-how”

For the first time since 2010 in GP2/F2, DAMS finished outside the Top 5. How do you explain it?

Clearly, it's been a difficult year. But this was the case for everyone due to the architecture of the calendar which was dictated by the health crisis. We continued racing, with nine weekends in eleven weeks during the summer. It didn't really leave time to breathe and, above all, to analyze. And obviously, that didn't help us understand where we were and what we needed to work on as a priority.

We very quickly lost our only experienced driver who was Sean Gelael (injured, he missed four rounds. Editor's note). Dan Ticktum was discovering the category after having hardly ridden the previous season. I think we lacked the benchmarks to know where we were good and where we weren't. And you know, when the match starts, it's difficult to come back from the score.

Was it the adaptation to 18 inches that made you suffer the most?

Yes, probably. As we had no downtime to properly analyze and understand the data, we continued the races without taking a step back and without doing the necessary studies. So those who were in the right window didn't ask too many questions, but for us who were outside, it was complicated. Afterwards, we still had good results. But it's a high level sport. It's all about the details. And if you don't do everything perfectly, you pay dearly.

A few years ago, we could have gotten away with it without too much trouble. Today, the level is so high that if you don't submit a perfect copy, you find yourself in the middle of the rankings. I hope this season will be different. We had time to do all the studies that we didn't have time to do in the rush of last season. Now, knowing what the gain will be on the track, it's too early to know.

It was the first year without Jean-Paul Driot, the founder of the team who died in the summer of 2019. To what extent can this also explain the results?

If Jean-Paul had been with us, unfortunately it would not have changed the situation. He delegated a lot of the running of the business to me and he gave us a lot when he came to the races. He boosted everyone. It is more the elements discussed above that explain our difficult season. But rest assured, we have not lost our know-how.

We are one of the most stable teams in the championship in terms of personnel. And we still know how to make fast and reliable cars. All this demonstrates above all that F2 is an extremely competitive formula at the level of the teams, the management, and the engineers.

Should we expect DAMS to return to the forefront in 2021?

This is clearly the objective. We cannot afford to end two years like this. With Greg and Olivier Driot, we want to put DAMS back in the forefront. We still know how to work. We have not lost, in the space of a few months, the good manners to do so. We hope to play in front and win the title. It's not going to be easy, because there are big clients, but we're starting with this objective. The priority is to win races and score points. The rest will come by itself.

Find the file on DAMS F2 driver Marcus Armstrong in AUTOhebdo magazine n°2299 currently available on newsstands and in digital version.