Aitken: F2 car unlikely to be 100% reliable

Jack Aitken doubts Formula 2’s new-for-2018 car will get to a stage of being 100 percent reliable, despite the series’ best efforts to fix ongoing issues.

The new F2 2018 car has been plagued by a multitude of reliability problems, including issues relating to clutches and engines. A number of drivers, including Aitken, have suffered from glitches that have significantly impacted results this year.

After a plethora of stalling incidents in the early races with the new generation car, F2 introduced a new rolling start procedure for the Austria and Silverstone rounds, before returning to standing starts in Hungary.

F2 has brought a number of updates to most of the races in 2018 in the hope of reaching a permanent fix, but Aitken doubts a silver bullet will be found before the end of the season.

“I think it’s unlikely that we will get to a stage where the car is 100 percent reliable, that’s always difficult to achieve,” Aitken told Crash.net. “All we can hope for is we don’t want it to affect the championship more than it already has.

“It’s a difficult one because everyone knows that when you bring a new car there will be issues. But then again there’s been more than the fair share this year and the car has been quite difficult.”

Aitken has endured a tough rookie campaign in F2 and sits 10^th in the standings, with his maiden victory in the Barcelona sprint race acting as a rare highlight.

The ART Grand Prix driver stalled three times in the first four races before suffering a throttle pedal sensor failure that robbed him of a front-of-the-grid start in Monaco, effectively ruining his entire weekend around Monte Carlo’s twisty streets.

Aitken hopes people watching his progress from the outside are aware of the reasons behind his string of poor results and do not simply take his finishing position at face value.

“I would hope that people looking from the outside recognise that and when they see that someone DNFs a race, there’s a reason and likewise that affects the championship,” he explained.

“I think everyone who knows, they are aware of that. It doesn’t look good on TV to the average consumer but that can’t really be helped at this stage.

“The [issues] have impacted everybody’s season to be fair. For us it came at some bad moments, probably the worst was Monaco when we were starting on the front row but everyone has struggled so I can’t really say that I’ve been worse affected than most.”

Aitken, who narrowly missed out on taking his first F2 pole in Hungary, acknowledged some mistakes have been self-inflicted, but ultimately feels he should be fighting for a top five spot in the championship.

“We definitely have had our fair share of bad luck but also I think the last few run of races we didn’t score any points when really we should have scored at least some,” he added.

“But it was either problems with the car or bad luck and a few mistakes from the team and myself. Without that we should be fighting for the top five. But we’ve still got plenty of time.”