Following the end of the F2 season at Abu Dhabi on December 1, the teams and drivers remained in the UAE and conducted testing ahead of 2020 from December 5-7, the last on-track action the teams will get before the 2020 pre-season test.
Ilott – who has recently signed for the team for next season after an impressive rookie F2 season in 2019 – set the fourth fastest time over the three-day test, but more importantly adapted well to his new car and helped UNI-Virtuosi work on set-ups ahead of next season.
The team's regular driver from 2019, Zhou, set the sixth fastest time in the test but was more focused on race runs, key ahead of building on his campaign this year where he was the top rookie in the F2 championship and helped UNI-Virtuosi to second in the teams’ championship.
UNI-Virtuosi would like to thank Luca Ghiotto – who has raced for the team in 2019 and 2017 – the team then under a previous name – as he moves on into sportscars for 2020. Luca was a vital part of the teams' efforts in 2019 and UNI-Virtuosi wishes someone who has become one of its family members a long and successful professional motorsports career.
Ilott's team-mate for 2020 will be announced in due course.
Callum Ilott:
In general the test was very good, very positive. It's a good bunch of people to work with at UNI-Virtuosi and it made it easy to integrate into the team straight away. Especially working with Joe on the test. I think we got through the plan that the team wanted to get through. Very happy with how it was and we got some good consistent results. It’s just testing, but it gives us a great idea of what we need to do next year at the start of the season in Bahrain. On my side I know there’s things to work on but I think we’ve got an idea of how to move ahead with that.
Guanyu Zhou:
It was good, everything was under control. We tested lots of things that we tried to improve on the car for next season. At the same time trying to compromise with next year having a new tyre and the car being heavier. Everything went well and I was quite happy with everything, especially with Callum alongside me as I felt we worked well at the test. I've known him for a long time now so it’s good. We did a lot of race runs, but I think overall we had a lot of good information for the future.
