Photo: WTCC Media

José María López excited ahead of next season

José María López just clinched his maiden title with Citroën at Suzuka. The Argentinian is now looking forward to next year, as he explained in an interview with TouringCarTimes.

When asked about the pressure he feels to repeat himself after such a strong year, the Argentinian said:”My way to face things in this sport is to always put pressure on myself, but I have to say that it will be difficult to repeat myself, especially with the team-mates I have. It will be very difficult to match a season like this, because it has been nearly perfect, but it will be nice to have such a benchmark because now I will always try to match this. It won’t be easy, but I will try my best as usual, in the end my job is to jump in the car and do the best possible job.”

López believes there is room for improvement, despite having an almost perfect season in 2014:”I think there is always room for improvement, I have been racing for 23 years and I am still improving all the time. On the technical side this was a very good year for me, I learned a lot. Yvan [Muller] said I probably had an advantage because the touring car I drove in Argentina was similar to this one, but I feel I improved during the season.”

“I probably didn’t start in the best shape, although I was on a very good level already. I then started to learn and improve things on the car. Next year it is going to be even more difficult to beat my team-mates, I must not relax, push a lot and be dedicated to my job. Of course I also didn’t know many of the tracks, and normally that should allow me to improve even more, although with the big technical changes the championship has undergone it was probably less of a factor this year.”

The new champion believes his home race was the key point in his title challenge:”I think Argentina was the turning point in the season, because at that time Yvan probably thought that the title fight would end up in my favour.”

With the season set to start in his home country next year, López is excited with the perspective:”Starting the season in Argentina would be great, and although it will be difficult to achieve what I did this year, it will still be amazing if the season does start in my home country. I think the crowd will even be bigger and it will be great.”

The 2014 World Champion finally talked about the perspective of racing at the iconic Nordschleife next year:”The Nordschleife will be amazing I believe. I have watched some races from there in the past and I think it is an incredible track, it’s a dangerous track but that is part of its charm. It’s going to be the first time that the WTCC visits the track and to be a part of this will definitely be amazing. If I had to choose one race to win it would be that one.”

“Pechito” López won nine races so far this season, and he has so far scored some 117 points more than his main rival, team-mate Yvan Muller.