De Palo dominates Race 1 at Spielberg and reclaims championship lead

Matteo De Palo and the Trident team dominated the first race at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg. The Roman driver took pole in qualifying and easily held off his rivals in the first race of the Austrian weekend. De Palo's perfect performance allowed him to regain first place in the overall championship standings with 196 points, against 185 for Slater. Starting well from pole, the young Trident driver maintained the lead throughout, never being seriously challenged by his rivals until the checkered flag. Nandhavud Bhirombhakdi and Ruiqi Liu had a solid race, but they finished outof the points and were hampered by a less than perfect qualifying.

Matteo De Palo: “So far it’s going really well. We have a lot more speed compared to the last two race weekends, we finally managed to find it again. We took pole position without even using the slipstream, so it was a strong performance. In the race, my start was perfect. I built a big gap to second place and from there I just had to stay consistent and manage my race pace. In the end, I won with a good margin, so we’re happy”.

Ruiqi Liu: “Qualifying could have gone better for sure. We will work to find a better solution. Now I can't say what exactly, but we will find something and I hope we can be stronger tomorrow. In the race, I had a good start but got pushed off on the first lap by another car and lost a lot of positions. After that, I was stuck in the traffic and couldn’t do much, so tomorrow I will try to start in a better position”.

Nandhavud Bhirombhakdi: “It was a boring race for me, as I started P15 and finished P15. Not much to say, it’s been a tough weekend from the start, but hopefully tomorrow will be better. I’ll just keep staying positive and see what I can do”.