Dan Ticktum brought back home points for Cupra Kiro Race in Monaco today.
It was a strong showing from the British driver, who had topped the two practice sessions and started third on the grid.
Ultimately he ended seventh on track after some early race struggles.
A positive day
Nevertheless, he was pretty satisfied with his performance as he told selected medias after the end of the race.
“Overall good, overall good. Yeah, I came out the gates very fast. I think the team have done a good job of understanding things this year and putting the car in the window for this morning.”
“The car felt great straight away. It’s a driver’s track as well, so I’ve always been fast here. I felt confident. Yeah, it all went well.”
Starting P3
Ticktum went on to explain the reasons behind his strong performance with Kiro at FE Monaco.
“As the morning progressed I think other drivers started to find their rhythm a bit more and get a bit closer. I think the Nissan and the McLaren Nissan overall is a slightly stronger package on one lap pace and I couldn’t have done much more in qualifying.”
What went wrong?
The Cupra Kiro driver went on to recall the main events of his race, including the battles with the championship leader and former F1 driver Nyck de Vries.
“So I’m relatively happy with everything. Then in the race, Rowland was very aggressive at cutting me off at the start which allowed De Vries to get past and then, you know, De Vries is always difficult. Nicely put. Elegant. All the drivers will say the same I’m sure.”
“So yeah, he put me off the track which allowed Pascal to get the run. At that point I was like, right, okay, Pascal’s a Porsche, we’ll try and work together. Got caught up with him in the Concertina because I didn’t really want to attack him too much.”
A messy situation
“Caught up in turn six at Fairmont in the concertina and then allowed people to sort of go around the outside. I was on the outside for them turning seven and eight and I just got done by one car out of the corner. So I lost three, four places I think.And that was pretty much the chances of a good result gone.” He ended the recalling of the events which led him to move a bit backwards.
“But then I think we salvaged what we could quite well actually. The team reacted well. I did pretty well at overtaking at the right times and trying to gain as many places back and salvage as much as we could.”
2025 evaluation
He was then asked by Pit Debrief on how to replicate such a successful performance in the upcoming race.
The Brit admitted that Cupra Kiro ‘s performance in the FE Monaco round was positive but rather hard to replicate.
“We’re still a bit up and down. I still think we’re not quite… If we went back to Miami now maybe we’d be faster but like some of the more conventional tracks we don’t seem to quite have the one lap pace. Here, like I said, it’s been good.”
“I would have been faster even with this team than we were with Porsche or Cupra before.Yeah, I think we are getting there. There’s a couple of things we learned from Miami which were helpful. We sort of know where we need to put the car, in what window. So we’re getting there.
Another day another race
Tomorrow will be another day and another round in the Principality. Ticktum will try to score Kiro’s first podium of the year in the FE Monaco E-Prix Round 7, even with some modifications.
“Yeah, it will. The energy targets will be lower which means, yeah, it’ll be more chaotic.There’ll be more lifting, more coasting, more moving about and all that stuff.”
