Renault Sport Academy member and French Formula 4 champion Caio Collet believes he’s showing progress in the Formula Renault Eurocup after a difficult start to the season.

The 17-year-old – who is also a protege of Nicolas Todt – has lagged behind his dominant R-ace GP team-mates Oscar Piastri and Alexander Smolyar, who are both in their second years in the championship.

For 2019, the Eurocup switched from its FR2.0 rulebook to regional Formula 3 machinery, posing a greater jump for rookies like Collet.

“I think the beginning was a bit hard,” Collet said to Formula Scout.

“Coming from F4, especially the F4 I was in, I was think about 10 seconds slower than this car. So it?s quite a big step.”

“Session-by-session, lap-by-lap I?m discovering new things and adapting more in the team. It?s new to me having a team – having my own engineer and everything. Last year everyone was the same car, same everything. It?s a new challenge and I think so far it?s been quite well.”

In his first weekend outside of the centrally-run French F4 championship at Monza, Collet only visited the top 10 once and was unable to match race-winning team-mate Smolyar.

The visit to Silverstone resulted in two top five finishes, down to improvements from Collet as much as R-ace GP’s domination, as well as the rookie win in race two.

“It feels quite good [to get the rookie win]. I showed progress from Monza to here, definitely. I think we are where we should be. The team did a perfect job, in both races we would?ve had all three cars in top five [if Smolyar didn’t retire in race one], so it shows we had good pace here.

“Monza was not really how I expected to be, but here I?m in the top five. I’ve never been to Monaco [the next Eurocup round], but it should be fun [as] Pau is one of my favourite circuits.