Now in his second year of racing in Spain, MP Motorsport’s René Lammers is Jan Przyrowski’s closest title rival after the inaugural round of the Eurocup-4 Spanish Winter Championship. Feeder Series spoke to the 16-year-old Dutch driver ahead of this weekend’s action at Portimão.

By Seb Tirado

Last time out at Jerez, Lammers took his maiden single-seater victory in the sprint race from second on the grid and added a third-place finish in the final race of the weekend. The results were a marked improvement over his previous showings at the circuit, which featured only one points finish with seventh in Spanish F4’s round last October.

But his upturn in form earlier this month didn’t come easy for two reasons – the colder winter conditions and the three aborted starts in the last race.

“Quali wasn’t the best,” Lammers said. “We made some mistakes there. I think my driving could’ve been a bit better and we could’ve fine-tuned a bit with the set-up.” 

He attributed these issues to the colder conditions compared to his last visit.

 “Quali was at 9 am in the morning for us this time, so it was quite cold. In winter at 9 am in the morning, the track’s always freezing – half-dry, half-wet. So it’s always very tricky for a driver and for the set-up to get it right and get the perfect combo.”

Lammers qualified 10th on Saturday morning and finished seventh in race one. Then, having qualified seventh for the final race of the weekend, Lammers almost befell the fate of MP stablemate Ean Eyckmans after the second start was aborted when the starting lights failed to extinguish.

“For Ean, my teammate, he burnt his clutch and had to start from the pit lane,” Lammers explained. “I burnt my clutch a bit initially when the lights stayed on. After that, it was tricky to get another good start in. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the best start in, but after a long wait, I think we did quite well in the race to recover.”

Despite the difficulties, Lammers still felt he and the team “have something to look forward to in the next few rounds”.

“Our race pace is there,” he said. “We just have to put all the points together in quali and then hopefully it should be fine.”

His results at Jerez currently put him second in the standings with 40 points, 23 behind Przyrowski, but the gap hasn’t deterred his determination.

“My goal is to try and win this championship and I think that’s the goal we all know in the team,” Lammers said. “We have the pace. Portimão’s a good track for me.”

Last year, Lammers achieved his second-best result of a challenging Spanish F4 season at the circuit, finishing fifth in the first race of the weekend. Even with the conditions again being very different from the warm weather on his last visit, the 16-year-old is still confident that he can put in a good performance. 

“It was one of my best rounds last year quali-wise, so I’m feeling confident we can put a good result down there,” he said.

“After the winter test [at Portimão], we were quite quick, we had some good pace and I felt comfortable with the car. So hopefully, we can replicate that this weekend and get some good results.”

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency