José María López: Nürburgring wins are “really special”
José María López pulled off a perfect score at the Nürburgring Nordschleife with pole position and a pair of victories, and with his closest championship rivals not scoring catapults further away into the points lead, describing his success this weekend as “really special”.
The Argentinian looked like a chief threat for the victory in the opening race, which was a three-way battle between Honda’s Tiago Monteiro and the two Citroëns of Yvan Muller and José María López, until Monteiro crashed out on the final lap taking Muller with him, handing López the path to an easy victory.
“If there’s a place where you want to win both races, here is really special,” said López.
“I was very cautious (in celebrating) after the first race as I think you need to be a good winner and a good loser, and today in the first race I took the profit of an accident,” he added.
“I locked the brakes in the first corner and (Tom) Chilton passed me and I lost a lot of time trying to repass Tom, and then at the moment at the accident I was getting really close. I saw Tiago suddenly went straight and hit the wall and Yvan braked and locked the wheels and went straight into him, so I just tried to keep on my line as everything happened really quick.”
In the second race, López looked set to dominate from pole position after breaking the record on Friday with a time in the 8:35s, but the Argentinian slipped behind the Honda of Norbert Michelisz at the start, and the Citroën driver had to re-pass the Hungarian in order to claim his second win.
“We normally do a very good start, and I did a good start, but Norbi did a fantastic start and he flew up. I was watching the mirror and I didn’t see him on my side and I thought he’d stalled as he’s not there, and then I saw he was in front of me into the first corner!” said López.
López built up a three second lead by the end of lap one before dropping back to running just ahead of the chasing pack of Michelisz, Tom Chilton and Rob Huff at the end, but said this was a deliberate move on his part following the tyre dramas of the weekend.
“I was not sure about the tyres and I didn’t want to take any risks, so I was trying to keep the gap but also keep the gap as we had the doubt, even though nothing had happened to us.”
López now leads the championship on 193 points ahead of Honda’s Tiago Monteiro, despite the Portuguese driver failing to score a point all weekend, but now falls to 69 points adrift with Honda team-mate Rob Huff second just 71 behind the points leader
The championship standings are still provisional subject to the results of the appeal of Honda against their exclusion from Hungary and Morocco.
