Dominant Macau Grand Prix winner Ugo Ugochukwu has been hailed by his team for a key trait that McLaren Formula 1 driver Oscar Piastri showed it in the past.
The American was in dominant form in Macau last weekend, securing pole position and leading every lap of the qualification race and main grand prix during a one-off appearance for the R-ace GP FR team.
That is the same squad that Piastri won the 2019 Formula Renault Eurocup for and has also had several other F1 drivers through its ranks, including Esteban Ocon, Pierre Gasly and Gabriel Bortoleto.
On a weekend when a cool and calm head paid dividends, as a host of drivers hit the walls at Macau, Ugochukwu’s inch-perfect approach impressed.
Isolating his emotions to be utterly level-headed in his approach to the job, a trait that Piastri is known to have, the 17-year-old became the first Macau winner of the Formula Regional era.
R-ace GP’s team manager Benjamin Schmidt told Autosport about the McLaren junior: “The behaviour of Ugo is always really calm. And I think it's a key factor for the drivers.
“He's looking at the data, he is understanding things, and never saying something higher or lower [in his emotions]. He's just always consistent in his behaviour.
“And I think that is what really makes the difference - putting the emotions a bit away sometimes.”
Asked if this was similar to how Piastri approaches things, Schmidt said: “Exactly, yeah. He is constant in the emotions, I would say.”
Schmidt said that R-ace GP were left impressed by Ugochukwu even before he drove at Macau because of the way he approached the task of building up to the weekend.
“I mean, already from the preparation, Ugo was quite impressive,” he said.
“We know Ugo quite well, even if he was not racing for us [this season], and we’ve tested quite a lot of times with him.
“He's definitely a good driver, quite talented. He has a huge experience as well, which makes these things a bit easier for him, even if it's never easy to win here in Macau.
“But he's definitely a good driver, and we were really happy to share this weekend with him. He just gave us this amazing win. So we cannot be grateful enough for that.”
Reflecting on the way he performed to his best throughout the Macau weekend, Ugochukwu said that he learned a lot from the way his performance in the F3 race last year was far from perfect.
“I came here last year and in the F3 the pace was really good, but I wasn't able to show it well,” he said.
“There were a couple too many mistakes, and I think I just learned from that this year.
“I managed to put everything together and I think, with that experience, I was able to build my weekend and just put myself into a really good position.”
