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Gabriele Tarquini not thinking about the championship

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Castrol Honda World Touring Car Team driver Gabriele Tarquini says he’s not thinking about the championship yet, stating it’ll be almost impossible for anyone to stop Yvan Muller unless the Frenchman runs into some bad luck.

The Italian finished 12th in the first race last weekend at the Salzburgring after starting 21st after he and the two other Hondas were sent to the back of the grid after their rear wing was found to be in breach of the technical regulations.

In the reversed grid second race, Tarquini finished eighth, reporting that his engine appeared to be down on power since the warm up, picking up just four points to round off a difficult weekend for the 2009 champion.

“The only positive thing is that compared to the last few races all the cars are OK and there was no crashes,” said Tarquini to TouringCarTimes. “This is a big advantage for the guys who worked so hard in the last few weeks and so now we can concentrate on some different things and we can perhaps test.”

Reflecting on the two races on Sunday, Tarquini added:
“For us, the grid is very important with our top speed. We struggled a lot in the second race because, at the moment I was the fastest Honda, and then with the reversed grid second race you maybe faster than the guy in front of you but if you don’t have a good top speed you can’t overtake.

“In the first race we started last so we decided not to attack very hard on the first lap to see if there was any accidents and also to wait for any tyre problems, so if something strange happened we could have scored points, but starting from the back, with our top speed as it is it’s quite impossible to score points.”

With Muller now pulling out an 80 point lead in the standings, with just 55 points available per race weekend, the Italian says he’s not concentrating on the title at this point.

“We never think about the championship, if you compare the speed of the car you cannot fight with the Chevy. Yvan is just the fastest Chevy driver. He can lose the championship as he’s on his own, if he has two or three bad weekends he could lose the championship, but if nothing happens his end he’s sure, as the gap between cars is unbelievable.”