QUINN REIGNITES HIS FORMULA 1 AMBITIONS
Rising star gets back on track for 2021
Most drivers do not hold out much hope of race victory when starting from 12th place, as Alex Quinn did for Formula Renault Eurocup’s second race at SpaFrancorchamps last October.
But it was Spa, where weather is notorious at the height of summer, let alone murky autumn. As all gathered on the grid the track was damp but drying, though were those spots of rain? Some went for a last-gasp switch to slicks.
Quinn stuck with wets and was quickly vindicated, yet even compared to those similarly shod his progress was stunning. After a lap he was fifth, after two he was second. A third of the way into the 30-minute race he’d got by team-mate Ugo De Wilde for first. Then he was never seen again, leading home an Arden 1-2 and taking his maiden category win.
“It was probably the highlight of my career as well as the year,” Quinn tells Motorsport News. “I had a bit of damage in qualifying which is why we [started 12th]. We’d been very quick in the wet and the dry throughout free practice; I knew that you could overtake at Spa, so I wasn’t too negative.
“The car was great. It was a race I enjoyed because after half distance I could see I had a good gap and I could relax.
“It was really really special, not just for me it was the whole team, no-one could stop smiling. I remember walking into the office and just looking at the two engineers and them just grinning.
I won’t forget that any day.”
The team’s mood wasn’t only due to the extraordinary race and result, as Quinn’s Arden Eurocup boss Ben Salter explains to MN. “In race one Reshad De Gerus, his team-mate, crashed at the top of Eau Rouge, completely ripped the rear end of the car off,” he says. “We finished at about 0500hrs, went back to the hotel, we were back at the track for 0730hrs. And even then we still had more work to do on the car. The car was finished one minute before the cars had to leave to go to the race, so then to get the 1-2 finish was something special. My proudest day since I’ve been at Arden, that’s for sure.”
It helped Quinn to fourth overall in the final Eurocup standings as well to the rookie championship crown. And Quinn’s achievements were yet more remarkable, as the 20-year-old taking part at all in the 300bhp single-seater championship was, for a time, a long shot.
“I was originally going to be racing with another team [in Eurocup],” Quinn notes, “and because of coronavirus and certain things, sponsors etc, that fell through just literally a week and a few days before we were flying to the first race.”
But for Quinn there was a flipside. Arden’s intended driver Australian Jackson Walls was unable to travel due to Covid’s restrictions. The team, familiar with Quinn, snapped him up for the first two rounds at Monza then Imola. And Quinn promptly put the car on Monza pole, plus was only a second shy of winning.
“[That] was the stuff dreams are made of,” Salter says. “He was strong right from the word go. And then [we] went to Imola, the second round, [he] had another podium there, both at tracks he’d never been to.”
Quinn adds: “That was one of the highlights getting pole at the first round. It was really good because Monza everyone says you rely on a tow, but we just went out and done it on our own and the car was feeling very good for what was my first time in the car that year, no testing, no nothing. And [to] go out there and put it on pole, we were so happy.”
The next round though wasn’t for a month and it looked like Walls would reclaim his seat. “But it then started to head towards the second [Covid] spike,” Salter recalls, “and he decided to not come back across. So Alex got the seat, still on a race-by-race basis but he was doing such a good job in the end it turned into the complete season which was really good and he had a really really strong season.”
This furthermore came after two years for Quinn without full-time racing.
He was a member of the Racing Steps Foundation and, after bagging seven British Formula 4 wins in two years as well as fourth in 2017’s championship, he then planned a Eurocup switch. But RSF stopped and Quinn was left high and dry, facing the familiar budget barrier to opportunities.
Quinn therefore for 2018 went for more cost-effective British GT where he again showed fine form in a GT4 Toyota. But… then his Steller team pulled out mid-year. “I was left sitting at home again,” Quinn muses. The softly-spoken Cornishman couldn’t catch a break it seemed.
That was until late August in 2019, when he got a call from Arden about a Eurocup opportunity. “[I] was asked to come and fill in for Sebastian Fernandez,” Quinn recalls. “I still remember the first time at Nurburgring getting back in the car and I was really nervous because it had been basically two years with no racing, no nothing.
Yet Quinn once again made an immediate splash. “Somehow [I] managed to finish second that weekend, behind Oscar Piastri, so it was quite relaxing for me to know that I haven’t lost it after the two years! I could come back and get on with it straight away.
I got on track and it all seemed to come back to me pretty quickly.” He could have added that he’d never before raced at the Nurburgring circuit and that Piastri became that year’s champion.
Quinn rates his adaptability as his own key strength, whether it’s with weather conditions – as seen at Spa – or to different cars and tracks, getting down to strong lap times quickly. “He has to,” Salter asserts. “It’s part of his make up now, just going back to the budget. Because when he does get in a car, be it our Renault or GT or whatever, he knows he might only get one shot at it and he does make the most of it, these opportunities.
“Where the budget’s limiting we can’t just throw tyres at it all the time so he has to be a perfectionist and nail everything first time out. That’s what been really impressive this week [in testing] is the fact that teams we’ve been testing against have been running a number of sets of tyres where we’ve had two sets new a day. He’s been right up there the whole week, and that’s been really impressive.”
Quinn’s priority for 2021 is to stay where he is, and Arden are pleased to retain him, though as ever budget will be a determinant. Also Quinn will have to again apply his adaptability skills as the Eurocup merges into the Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine.
For Quinn though just getting back on track in the last 18 months has been a vital career ‘reboot’. “If you’re not on track then things won’t come your way,” he notes. “The best thing that happened to me was getting back after the two years away and doing the odd race and proving that I could have results and that then resulted in me having this year [2020], a full year.
“Every time I am on track are the times to focus on myself and driving and then hopefully things will come my way. [It’s] an unknown, will something come or will it not, but I’m used to it now, so just going to stay positive.”
Salter adds: “He’s right up there in terms of drivers I’ve worked with, certainly.
It’s just a shame we haven’t got the top funding that we all know everybody needs at this level to make it.
“I can’t help thinking he was really unlucky because he looked like he had his first breakthrough season in cars when the RSF stuff ended, this year he had such a good standout season in Eurocup with limited next-to-nothing testing and he would have been certainly a nomination for the Autosport young driver award which carries £200,000 funding. He’s got to that point in his career that he’s needed that extra bit and each time he’s been unlucky not to get it, it just needs that breakthrough.”
But with Quinn this time getting testing between seasons and having built strong momentum in late 2020, if funding can be secured then Quinn is ideally placed for a Formula Regional charge in 2021. “He missed so much of the pre-season testing and post-season testing last year he’s always playing catch up; this year we’ve had six days’testing with him,” Salter adds.
“Looking at how the winter testing’s gone and the end of the [2020] season he’d be a strong championship contender, that is for sure.”