14th September 2014: BRDC Rising Star Jack Aitken has claimed maiden pole and race victory in the 2014 Formula Renault Eurocup 2.0 at the Hungaroring in Budapest. This victory follows the 18 year old's first podium at the previous round in Nurburgring. The huge improvement in fortune is no doubt associated with his transition in July from full time student to professional racer.
Round five of the World Series by Renault event started with a rain soaked Friday practice. Despite extremely tricky driving conditions for most of the day, 18 year old Jack and his Daventry based Fortec Motorsports team were able to extract vital information and wet track data to allow Jack to put in several hot-paced timed laps and set the third fastest time by the end of the tests.
Unfortunately the young British racers first qualifying session of the weekend did not go well. Jack's #8 Fortec FR2.0/13 by Tatuus machine started the Saturday morning session on slick tyres, as per the rest of his group. However an uncharacteristic mistake caused the car to veer off track and into the gravel after only completing 3 laps. Jack was devastated, knowing he had the pace to compete at the front, yet would now have to start at the back of the grid.
Race one later in the day followed the same weather theme, affording Jack with a lot of work to do from P27 at the rear of the grid to avoid a number of on-track incidents. He eventually finished P18 at the end of the 16-lap race.
Overnight showers caused much the same driving conditions on Sunday morning. In the second qualifying session, Jack took to the slippery track in a confident and error free performance and put in a quick lap of 2:02:274 after fighting for pole for most of the session to outpace his Fortec team mate, Charles Leclerc, and championship leader, Nyck de Vries (Koiranen GP), to claim his maiden pole position in the series.
In the race itself Jack won his first Formula Renault Eurocup 2.0 race in a lights to flag dominating performance. The action-filled finale endured an early yellow flag with safety car period and five race retirements. Jack dealt with the circumstances as they arose, generally maintaining a reasonably comfortable lead at the head of the pack to take home the winner’s trophy and his second podium finish of the year.
Jack Aitken, #8 Fortec Motorsports:“We struggled in the first half of the season, partly because of our lack of pre-season practice. There was nothing we could do about that, but we expected to come good in the second half of the season. The team has worked really hard to make that happen and now we have our first win. We are looking to continue to product strong results at Paul Ricard and Jerez, and have a really strong end to the season. I have to say a huge thank you to all the guys at Fortec for supporting me and giving me a race winner today!"
