Photo: Castrol Honda World Touring Car Team

Gabriele Tarquini: “We must be closer than this”

Gabriele Tarquini says that Honda must be able to fight Citroën for wins in the coming rounds when taking advantage of compensation weight, after a race where he was surprised by the French cars overall pace in qualifying.

Tarquini’s races in Hungary were blighted by a mistake in qualifying, where he damaged the newly upgraded Honda Civic WTCC at Turn 4 on his first run, forcing him to start from last at arguably the hardest track to overtake on the calendar.

“I expected to be in the points,” said Tarquini to TouringCarTimes. “In the first race I didn’t have a really good start because I was surprised by how short the gap was between the red and green, and as I was the last position I was not ready to start. I recovered some positions over the first few laps, but then I joined the main group behind Tom (Coronel) but it was just impossible to overtake.”

Tarquini finished 11th just outside of the points, but was later disqualified from the first race as the team had connected the tyre pressure sensor while the car was still in parc ferme between the two races.

In the second race, Tarquini’s race was over before the first corner after he was forced off the track by Campos Racing’s John Filippi, who edged to the left after bogging down at the start and into the Italian’s path.

“It was very strange,” said Tarquini. “He was stopped on the standing start, I was in first gear and I was already overtaking and then he moved sideways and I had to jump onto the grass in first or second gear so with a lot of wheel spin. It’s a shame as I had a really good start, but I had to stop because of all the grass in the radiator so the temperature was getting too high. After that I just went out to test the solution I used in the second race, the car was better than in the first race, so I tried to collect some data.”

Tarquini went on to set the fastest lap in the second race with no traffic, while the Citroëns were bottled up behind team-mate Tiago Monteiro who took the best result of the weekend for the two factory prepared Hondas in fourth, while Norbert Michelisz took the first win of the year for Honda in the privateer car run by Zengő Motorsport.

However in qualifying, Citroën dominated the session as per the first few races, even with compensation weight coming to effect in Hungary, with the C-Elysées running with the maximum 60kg of ballast, while Honda, Lada and Chevrolet all ran at the lowest possible weight of 1,100kg at the Hungaroring.

“We must be closer than this,” added Tarquini. “I don’t know if we can beat them on the same weight, but when we are 60kg lighter we must be able to beat them. At the moment at some tracks we are far away, but there are some tracks coming up where we must beat them.”

Tarquini eluded to the possibility that the French marque weren’t even showing their full potential during the first few race meetings, after no noticeable change in performance was seen in Hungary.

“When I judge the qualifying performance, I’m also aware of the weight…the difference was more or less the same difference per kilometre as the first race when we were all on the same weight, which was on a track where normally speed is more important than here.”