Not being able to beat the current Drivers’ Championship leader Abbi Pulling throughout the weekend, Doriane Pin spoke about the challenges she faced during the Miami Grand Prix — the main one being her car.
Representing Mercedes and driving with PREMA Racing in F1 Academy, the 20-year-old struggled with the set-up of her car, as well as with the temperature in tyres. She still gave us a spectacular performance, claiming P2 in Race 1 and then P3 in Race 2, however couldn’t do anything with Pulling extending her lead to a total of 34 points.
“It was still not enough today to take the win, but I think we improved the car from [Saturday],” Pin said about the difference in her car between Qualifying and Race 1 on Saturday and Race 2 on Sunday.
“We still missed, and it’s still not enough, but it is positive that we took good points for the championship. We were always consistent and fighting in the top position for the podium, so it’s important to analyze this weekend and just focus on the next one now.”
The all-female grid of F1 Academy definitely had to put up with not-so-easy conditions, especially because of the hot weather in Miami.
“Yeah, it’s quite hot in there, especially humid, so you lose quite a lot of water, but it’s important to get it right before the race and after the race. We don’t have water in the car, so it’s fine, it’s only 30 minutes, I’m used to long races, endurance races, so it’s okay, but it’s still something to manage and something to take into account,” the French driver commented.
Apart from F1 Academy, Doriane Pin is racing in Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine (FRECA) as part of Iron Dame’s line-up, along with the 2023 F1 Academy Drivers’ Champion Marta García. With the team, she’s also driving in the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC), in which Iron Dames are a race-winning team.
Before coming to Barcelona for Round 3 of the all-female racing series, Pin has quite a busy schedule with the start of FRECA’s 2024 season next week in Hockenheim and WEC’s Le Mans in early June.
To this, she said: “Yeah, I’ve got quite a lot of stuff between Barcelona. I’m doing FRECA this season, and it’s an amazing opportunity for me as a driver because it’s also a challenging championship with a lot of cars, so I’m really looking forward to opening next week, it’s already next week.
“Then I have the 24 Hours of Le Mans with the Iron Dames, so it’s one of the biggest races of the year and I’m really excited and I hope we can achieve something good with the Iron Dames because we’ve worked so hard for that and I’m sure we will be strong. I’ve done Le Mans, so I already have a good picture of it, but GT is way different than the LMP2 for sure. Doing the road to Le Mans in 2021 gave me some references for the GT car.
“I think we have quite a lot of FP before the race, so I think we’re going to focus on that and focus that everything is ready and everything is settled to perform and to be consistent and no mistakes, which is the key of 24 Hours of Le Mans, it’s not all about performance, it’s really about being intelligent and strategic and stuff, so I’m looking forward to that.”
Certainly, Pin will try to snatch the most points in all categories, aiming to top Abbi Pulling on the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, where she has a lot of previous experience.
