Photo: Castrol Honda WTC

Honda aim to close the gap following Valencia test

The Castrol Honda World Touring Car Team completed a four day test in Valencia last week ahead of the next round of the FIA World Touring Car Championship in Argentina, with a number of upgrades being fitted to the team’s Civic WTCCs which they hope will help them close the gap to the dominant Citroën Total WTCC team.

The team tested with the sixth Civic TC1 car, after their original test car had to become Gabriele Tarquini’s race car from the second round at Paul Ricard, after a heavy impact during free practice in Marrakech, when he was hit by Gianni Morbidelli’s Chevrolet RML Cruze.

“Before the start of the season we built five cars, two for the Castrol Honda World Touring Car Team and two for Zengő Motorsport and Proteam Racing, plus a chassis for the test team,” said Honda Racing Team Principal Alessandro Mariani.

“It’s well known that the chassis that was meant for the test team had to be prepared for the race in Paul Ricard, following Gabriele Tarquini’s crash in Marrakech. That completely changed our planning, because not only did we have five meetings that closely followed each other, we also could not rely on the information of a test team. Because of that busy schedule we could only start building the new car, chassis no. 6, in the second half of June, and the earliest opportunity to test it was last week on the Spanish track of Valencia.”

The team’s regular race cars just arrived last week in Argentina, after leaving port in The Netherlands shortly after the last round of the Championship at Spa-Francorchamps at the end of June.

The team have been testing a number of components, but as yet have not had to make use of their second permitted homologation for the season, which is allowed this year due to the change in technical regulations.

The team can re-homologate their car once without penalty, using their “joker”. It’s very much expected that this homologation will be used to introduce a new engine development, with the Honda’s Achilles’ Heel clearly being their straight-line speed performance compared with the Citroën C-Elysée and Chevrolet RML Cruzes.

Honda have however never commented on whether they are working on another engine development, which would be produced by engine partners Mugen.

“The changes have been quite significant,” said driver of the #18 Honda Civic, Tiago Monteiro. “We hope to be in good shape for racing on the Termas Río Hondo circuit.”

On the Argentinian track, Monteiro remarked:

“The straights may be detrimental to our car, but we will try to compensate for this in part in the more technical sections where the Honda should be very agile. This is not an easy track, but last year everything ran smoothly. Scoring points is always our priority, as well as keeping our fourth place in the (drivers’) championship.”