Tatiana Calderon: “It’s crazy to think how far we’ve come”
Richard Mille Racing’s Tatiana Calderon is embracing the challenge of her and her teammates first season in the FIA World Endurance Championship.
In 2020 the all-female crewed squad, which is run by the Signatech organisation, enjoyed a solid season of achievements including a fifth place finish on debut at Paul Ricard and a ninth in the ultra-competitive LMP2 class at Le Mans last September.
For this season the decision was taken to enter the WEC and it has started well with Calderon plus teammates Sophia Floersch and Beitske Visser with two eighth places at Spa and Monza sandwiching a sixth at Portimao.
“It's crazy to think that the first raise we all did together was Le Mans last year,” said Calderon.
“So it's amazing to now see how far we've come and how much we have understood the endurance mentality because you know, coming from single seaters, you can be very selfish at the beginning.”
Calderon cited both getting familiar with a host of new rules and procedures added to technical challenges such as a new aero kit and a switch from Michelin to Goodyear rubber this season.
“In terms of procedures and everything it now just comes naturally as before you have to think about it quite a lot, with the slow zones and all the little procedures, like even how you park the car in the pit lane,” said the Colombian.
“So now it just comes naturally, and I think we are ready to push now. I think our second year here it's very important to use the experience of last year and of course we want to do better, so I think we will have better pace.”
The driver concluded: “Yes, the competition is harder in my eyes, so it won't be easy to just match what we did last year but we will try our best to be fighting more people around us and hopefully get a really strong result.
