Jan Przyrowski said he was unhappy with his results at the Spanish Formula 4 season opener in Jarama despite finishing third in race three and topping the timesheets in pre-event testing and practice one.

By Juan Arroyo

The Campos Racing driver, making his debut in the series, was fastest in the official test held before the weekend and in the first practice session. He was second fastest in the second practice session behind Rodin Motorsport’s Thomas Strauven.

Przyrowski set the 18th-fastest time in the first qualifying session of the weekend – which set the order for race one – making his way up to 14th by the chequered flag.

He finished 11th in race two, having started from 15th, benefitting from a first-lap incident in which Maciej Gładysz initiated the contact that resulted in the simultaneous retirements of Mattia Colnaghi, Lucas Fluxá and Ernesto Rivera.

Przyrowski set up his best result of the weekend by qualifying fourth in the second qualifying session, which placed him on the second row of the grid for race three. The Polish driver had a relatively uneventful race until, with six minutes remaining, the leading pair of Fluxá and Colnaghi collided at Turn 4, allowing Przyrowski to move into second place behind his teammate Rivera.

However, the race ended shortly after with a red flag, meaning the results were taken from the penultimate lap in the run-up to the incident, when Fluxá and Colnaghi were still at the front. Colnaghi was deemed at fault for their collision and was handed a 10-second penalty, which promoted Rivera to second and Przyrowski to third.

“I’m not really too happy about the results,” Pryzrowski said. “For me, it could have been much better, especially when you look at the tests and the free practices. Then we came to qualifying and I had a bad time that really threw my weekend away.

“The last race, we were P4 in qualifying, I managed to make an okay start – not the best, not the worst – managed to hold my position and then I was just driving P4 and nothing really happened.”

Przyrowski also topped the overall times in the collective test held at the circuit in late April and feels he has already adapted to the F4 car, saying, “it’s just little things that I can improve now”. That, coupled with a strong start to the weekend in testing and practice, led the Polish driver to expect much better results at Jarama than he had.

“In [the first qualifying session], I just missed half a second out of nowhere. For me, it was one tyre that was wrong, defective. Then it really threw my weekend away because for race one and race two, I was starting from the back and it’s not really easy to overtake on such a small track like this,” he said.

“For race three, I didn’t know what the balance would be with the tyres and that really also didn’t help for the Q2 starting P4, but then I managed to get calm and pick the pace back up.”

“I feel like I will be fighting for podiums, wins, mostly all over the calendar year,” Przyrowski said. “I feel like there must be at least one bad weekend. It’s nice that I have it at the start. Then I can just focus on not making many mistakes and trying to get back in the championship.”

“I feel I used all the bad luck I could for this year,” he added.

It wasn’t the strongest weekend for Campos Racing either. The team failed to win at least one race in a weekend for the first time since Navarra last year – five rounds ago. Though their drivers were behind MP Motorsport’s and Rodin’s in qualifying and the races, Przyrowski said he felt practice and testing times tell a different story.

“For me, it’s not [on] the team. It was just bad luck for all of us because in the tests, pre-practices, collective tests, we were top 10, all of us. Then for qualifying, we just missed a lot of time out of nowhere. The team was really unlucky this week and I hope we can work it out next time.”

Header photo credit: Eduard Cartaña / Fotocar13