Ready to rebound after Monza’s disappointment

Charles Milesi did not hide his disappointment at the end of his first race in Formula Renault 2.0. As the young man is not the type to seek external excuses, he has addressed his most severe criticism to himself in order to find solutions to approach his next race in better conditions.

Charles had regained good form after the illness contracted at Pau that prevented him from participating in the 4th event of the French F4 Championship. Even though these worries are now in the past, his return to Monza followed a long period away from the circuits. He took the start of the first race of the Northern European Cup in FR 2.0 on the track where he had won his first race in single-seaters, a beautiful victory in F4 at the end of April.

“I cannot say that the Italian route posed particular problems for me,” he explained. “I was not aiming for victory in my first competition in FR 2.0, but I confess that I thought I could reach the podium as a result of my progress in free practice. The R-ace GP team did a very serious job of focusing on my car for the NEC and I certainly had a good card to play at Monza.“

Charles was close to the accident in Q1 when a red flag interrupted the session when he had not yet posted a quick lap. He rejoined to the track as soon as the lights returned to green and posted the 5th fastest time on his single lap. He thought he could improve his fate on new tyres during Q2 a few minutes later, but it was not to be. He struggled to find the right balance between the right dose of slipstream and the inevitable aero break that occurred when following a competitor too closely, so he only posted the 8th fastest time.

On Saturday, Race 1 was not going to fix the situation. He attacked from the start and found himself neck and neck with Thomas Maxwell in the first chicane, the variante del Rettifilio. Inside the lefthander, the two cars made contact and the race stopped there. “Maxwell surprised me by closing his line at the end of the corner. I touched him a first time, then we were unbalanced and it was too late to save the situation. The onboard video showed how the incident occurred, the fault was shared. But the sports commissioners refused to view it that way and penalised me by four places for the start of Race 2.“

This second race, disputed on Sunday, was disrupted by several incidents requiring the intervention of the Safety Car every time. After a cautious start, Charles moved up quickly from 12th to 6th position in the short time remaining before securing 8th place on the line to avoid another crash.

Aware of the mistakes that he made at Monza and determined to quickly learn from the consequences, Charles will resume racing in mid-July for a round of the Eurocup FR 2.0 at the Nürburgring. This will be a new challenge in the presence of the best drivers of the 2017 field. The clear-sightedness and motivation of the R-ace GP driver will allow him to rectify the situation in Germany.