Paul Aron is flying back to Alpine’s Enstone base for an overnight simulator session after driving for the team in first practice at Monza.
He will then return to Monza on Saturday to continue supporting the team at the track. “It’s probably as busy a Friday as you can get,” he admitted on Friday.
Aron, who drove Franco Colapinto’s car in first practice before handing it back to the team’s regular driver, will use his real-world experience of driving the car today to help the team correlate their data from second practice.
“I think there will be no sleep,” he told the official Formula 1 channel, “but hopefully by Sunday I’ll get to recover a little bit.”
He said the team wanted to take full advantage of the opportunity to put a driver in the simulator who had been in the car at the track just hours earlier. “That’s the point and that’s why we are doing it,” he said.
“You don’t get many opportunities to have a driver who’s driven the car during the weekend go back to the sim and have the actual feel of driving the real car. Normally you just watch the onboards and take the comments of the other drivers.
“So of course it’s a good opportunity for the team and I’m pretty sure it’s do-able. I’m interested to see how it goes.”
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Aron ended practice at the bottom of the times, half a second slower than team mate Pierre Gasly. He had one spin, at the Roggia chicane.
“Obviously the mistake was made but I think it’s okay,” he said. “There was nothing wrong with the car and I recovered well and I got to do the whole session.
“These things can happen and for sure from my side I was trying a little bit in that session. You don’t get many opportunities and you need to take everything with both hands.”
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