Photo: WTCC Media

James Thompson takes strong points haul in race of attrition

Lada Sport Rosneft’s James Thompson scored six points in Morocco after being classified seventh in the second race of the day, gaining three spots as penalties were handed out after initially grabbing just one point when he crossed the line in tenth.

Tenth was already a better-than-expected result for the Lada driver, with all three drivers suffering with intermittent power steering problems all weekend which effectively ruled them out of the battle with Chevrolet, Honda and Citroën.

“With all the problems we had this weekend, points are a reward for the lot of work from the boys and for us persevering driving it around,” said Thompson to TouringCarTimes.

“The car would have been quite a lot of faster if we could actually steer it. We managed to get it around the first race, and in the second race the car wasn’t much better. We made a couple of changes, but even starting at the back I knew that the reality was we might get some points as I know that last year there was a lot of drama, so I just tried to drive it around and be there in the end.”

“Ultimately we’re just nursing problems, but the buys have not given up this weekend and have been working hard, so even though it’s not exactly the result we wanted, we’ll take it.”