Racing Point needs 'normal races and a bit of luck'

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Racing Point technical director Andy Green is hoping that the team gets a bit of normality not to mention an end to its recent run of bad luck in the remaining six races of the 2020 season.

It's been a turbulent year for the team, which lost 15 championship points and was fined €400,000 after the brake ducts on this year's car were deemed too similar to those of last year's title-winning Mercedes design.

And since then, Sergio Perez became the first and to date only active F1 driver to test positive for coronavirus which forced him to miss both races of the Silverstone double-header.

He was replaced by Nico Hulkenberg, who was also in action last weekend at the Eifel Grand Prix in what proved to be another fraught race when Lance Stroll fell ill just hours before qualifying.

Read also: Perez frustrated with fourth, Hulkenberg thrilled with P8

“We just don’t seem to be getting the run of the green at the moment," said Green in something of a masterpiece of understatement.

"I just want a normal race weekend. We haven’t a normal race weekend probably since race one of this season," he told the media in Germany including Motorsportweek.com and RaceFans.net. “Something happens every weekend

"All we need between now and the end of the season is just to have normal race weekends, where we can just race the car, set it up normally - just have a normal weekend without any major distractions."

Despite the last-minute panic at the Nurburgring, Racing Point actually came away with a solid result.

Even though he had predicted a 'painful day' ahead, Sergio Perez took fourth place in the race while Hulkenberg finished in the points in eighth despite having no chance to practice.

It meant Racing Point moved back in front of McLaren in the constructors championship by four points and are now third in the standings.

However Perez remained frustrated not to be able to pass Daniel Ricciardo for a podium place in the closing laps of the Eifel GP, having also narrowly missed out in the previous race at Sochi.

Asked what it would take to finish in the top three, Green replied: "Stop getting a lot of bad luck, to start with!

“If we have that then I think we really can challenge for third, we really can," he insisted. “That will give us our best possible opportunity."

“It’s going to be a real battle. There’s three teams there, we’re just swapping places all the time," he added. "It’s going to be good fun to the end of the season.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.