Hugo Valente regrets qualifying crash, but happy with strong pace

Campos Racing’s Hugo Valente finished the second segment of qualifying second fastest in Marrakech for the second round of this year’s World Touring Car Championship, and after the team’s plan to go for the reversed grid pole effectively fell by the wayside, the 22-year-old switched his target to go for the front-row despite his engine change penalty, but then locked up on the one-lap shootout and ended up unceremoniously in the tyre barrier.

“I was too optimistic, I don’t know”, said Valente to TouringCarTimes. “I feel really stupid as I know that Chilton didn’t go out, and that Bennani’s time was four-tenths off my time from Q2, so I knew if I did a good lap I’d be P2.”

While Chilton had opted to not take part in Q3, therefore ensuring the best possible position for race two of sixth was his since he like Valente also has an engine change penalty this weekend for race one, Valente chose to go for glory and qualify amongst the Citroën drivers.

“We still wanted to prove that we had good performance. In Q2 what we wanted to do was be ninth or tenth, but when I was sixth the risk was too high of me ending up around 11th, so I went again and that time was good enough for second, so from that moment we thought we may as well try and get pole position.

“My time in Q2 was a 1:43.8, and I knew after Bennani had done his time I could probably be second, but we were in the pit-lane for quite a long time and the brakes cooled down a lot, so when I went on track I probably didn’t warm them up enough and I braked just a little too late at the first corner.”

Despite the off, Valente will start race one from 12th and race two from seventh on the grid, and given the qualifying pace shown today is happy with the turnaround after the two crashes which effectively destroyed his weekend last month at Termas de Río Hondo.

“I’m happy after Argentina, we were quite fast there but I had a crash in free practice and it wasn’t possible to show it, so I’m glad we were able to show our potential in Q2. We’ve been struggling a lot with the set-up since yesterday, but we made some changes for qualifying and I’m really happy that it’s worked out.”