After suffering suspension failures and pit stop mistakes in Malaysia, Dragon Racing is keen to make up for lost time.

“We put two cars in the top five in Beijing and we were going to in Putrajaya again,” said driver Jerome d’Ambrosio in a press conference today at the Punta del Este track. “That’s clearly the objective again. We still have some work to do to beat the fastest. In managing the race we have been pretty good so far. We’ll keep trying to improve that but, if we do a good job, we should be near the front with both cars.”

Explaining the issues faced by the team last time out, squad boss Oriol Servia said: “You saw in the last race in Malaysia that we were very strong. Loic was leading and I messed it up in the pits, actually. I kept him in too long. With one lap to go, both cars were out. Would you believe it? It’s about luck. Some part of the suspension became disassembled. It didn’t even break. It was very painful – for the race and for our pockets.”

Servia went on: “We are the only team to put both drivers on the podium and we were going to do it again. Renault has the best car right now which is why it was so disappointing: in the one race that they struggled, we couldn’t capitalise on that.”

Looking ahead to tomorrow’s race, d’Ambrosio isn’t worried about trying to catch the French team in qualifying. “Qualifying is relatively important. In a normal category, it is maybe 90% of the race. Here, it’s maybe 60-70%. The pit stop is not something that will make you win but it will easily make you lose a lot of time. So you have to get it right if you want to win the race. A soon as you go off line here, there’s a big difference in grip, which can be hard to manage. We only race on non-permanent circuits, so they’re always a little bit dirty.”

Dragon Racing has been announced as a constructor team for season three, although details are scarce about technology partners for the venture. Servia said: “We want to be a constructor. Now we’re relying on Venturi and they’ve been great to deal with, but we want to put together a package that we think will be best.”