Dušan Borković drops to sixth in race one following technical penalty

Campos Racing’s Dušan Borković has lost his fifth place finish in his first WTCC race at Marrakech due to a technical infringement, with no memory card found to be in his FIA camera following the race. The stewards have served him with a ten second penalty, which drops him behind Tiago Monteiro, with whom he’d had contact earlier in the race.

Borković was running in sixth behind Monteiro in the early stages, with the Honda driver having had a strong start in the Honda Racing Team JAS Honda Civic, but Borković’s Chevrolet was clearly being held up by the Honda which is slower in the straight line around the Marrakech circuit.

At the end of lap four, Borković made a dive down the inside of Monteiro at the final corner, with the two making contact, damaging the Honda’s rear bumper and dropped Monteiro back towards the independent Hondas of Norbert Michelisz and Mehdi Bennani, but the Portuguese driver was able to continue to finish sixth.

The officials reviewed the incident and decided to reprimand Borković for the contact, but due to a technical infringement, with no SD card found to be in the FIA’s official camera so that they could review the onboard camera, the stewards have awarded him with a ten second penalty which drops him to sixth behind Monteiro.

“(The stewards) said that I hit Tiago, but I passed Tiago two laps before and he cut the chicane, so he should have got a drive-through, and later I wanted to and pass him in the braking (for the final turn) and he wanted to go onto my line,” said Borković to TouringCarTimes.

“I was faster than Tiago, he was really slow at the beginning and we tried to overtake him to try and catch Tom Chilton, but then when I saw that Chilton was so far ahead I calmed a little bit, and tried not to use the brakes up so much to finish fifth.”

“(But) the team forgot to put the camera in my car, so they can’t see what happened.”

“In the second race, I thought it could have been better. I passed Münnich and then just in front of me was Coronel and I braked to not hit him and then Münnich passed me, Valente passed me, everyone passed me, and then the car caught fire due to oil on the brakes.”

Monteiro believes that Borković just needed to bide his time more before making the move, and that he still had the right to defend as hard as he could.

“I think he didn’t need to push me, because he could go by in so many other places,” said Monteiro to TouringCarTimes. “I’m not going to just let him go, I’m going to give a fight, and it’s up to him to go around. He didn’t need to push me, I’m going to talk to him and just let him know that I have one credit on my side now, and hopefully he’ll remember in the future.”