‘This is a situation that we really wanted’– Sander Dorsman delighted with rookie trio following F3 tests

Pre-season testing could hardly have gone better for MP Motorsport with Caio Collet topping the timesheets in Spielberg and Victor Martins leading both days in Barcelona. But Team boss Sander Dorsman has said that it’s now about “the real thing,” although did admit that “the end result looked quite nice on the timing sheet.”

Finishing sixth in the Championship last season with three podiums and a win, MP Motorsport were 32 points better off than in 2019, where they also finished sixth, but only took two podiums and zero wins.

Heading into the new campaign, Dorsman is after further improvements this year, and he believes he has got the right men to do it.

“Caio (Collet) and Victor (Martins) are really pushing each other to another level,” he said. “That is really nice to have in the team. Then, we’ve got a really young driver in Tijmen (Van der Helm), who is still super young, but profits from having two strong, slightly more experienced, teammates next to him. Over the four days we’ve had so far, he’s really picked things up quite nicely.

“This is a situation that we really wanted to have. I think that we’ve got a really nice set of drivers this year, all of them rookies in F3. We’re in a nice situation to have the two guys from Alpine pushing each other a lot, and obviously it is for us, along with the drivers and Alpine, to go and get some results during the season.”

Despite topping both sets of pre-season tests and departing Barcelona with plenty of optimism, Dorsman remained coy on their chances ahead of the new campaign, insisting that a race weekend will be an entirely different proposition.

“It is a bit of a cliché, but testing is testing, and racing is racing, so let’s see,” he continued. “I think for us, the objective was just to work hard and prepare for the season. Obviously, the end-result looked quite nice on the timing sheet, but now it’s about the real thing and we are focused on that.

“It’s now time to analyse what we have seen during the test days and prepare ourselves for the first race in Barcelona, which will be a different game. I think we’ve had some good and useful test days and I am happy about that. We’ve now got two weeks to go, and everyone is looking forward to getting the season started.”