Power steering issues plague Lada in Morocco

Lada Sport Rosneft’s three drivers will start in the bottom half of the grid for both of today’s races in Marrakech after power steering problems persisted throughout practice and qualifying. These issues were an added drama for Lada, as they are in addition to a pair of engine change penalties which were picked up by James Thompson and Rob Huff after the new Vestas hit trouble testing two weeks’ ago in Portimao.

Mikhail Kozlovskiy, making his first appearance of the season as his car was not ready for the season opener in Argentina, will start race one from 12th position, the best placed of the three Ladas in that race, while Rob Huff will start 13th on the grid for race two, with James Thompson starting 15th and 16th in the two races.

“Unfortunately we’ve got power steering problems, I’m already on to the second system on my car, and the reality is if you can’t steer the car, you can’t drive it, so we’re not very representative,” said Thompson to TouringCarTimes.

“It’s very intermittent…sometimes it fails totally, so you just have to come into the pits, other times it’s working on the straights, but then in the corners it stops, (when that happens) you can sort of get through the corner but then you have to jump the kerbs. It’s fair to say it’s been a bit of a troubled weekend.”

Looking to how the two-time British Touring Car champion will tackle the tricky street circuit today, Thompson added:
“We just need to make sure the car’s in one piece. I know it doesn’t sound very exciting, but there’s no point with all the testing and races coming up to try and do anything crazy here. As we saw last year, it’s a bit more about attrition, especially if people get a bit too excited at the front, then we can end up picking up points just by finishing.”