Photo: TCR Media

Pepe Oriola targets return to the lead ahead of Macau finale

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Craft-Bamboo Racing’s Pepe Oriola has said his aim is to get back in the championship lead ahead of team-mate James Nash during the next two races, where his British rival will be at a disadvantage through lack of experience.

Oriola took the championship lead after scoring pole position on Saturday and extended it to 15 points after victory in Race 1 in Thailand, but a puncture in Race 2 saw the Spaniard finish outside of the points and fall seven behind Nash, who stormed to victory in the second heat.

“(In Race 1) I made a perfect start, it was my best of the year as at the first corner I had a good advantage over Gianni (Morbidelli) and was surprised as usually they have really good starts,” said Oriola. “Then on the first lap I was a little bit faster than him, so I managed the gap as I could see he had heat problems with the car so I knew as long as I didn’t make a mistake I could beat him”

Oriola’s challenged came unstuck in Race 2 after an incident with B3 Racing’s Mat’o Homola following Morbidelli’s crash on lap one at Turn 8, for which he was investigated for but the stewards decided to take no further action.

“After Gianni’s incident I tried to avoid him at the outside at Turn 10 and I got the dirty stuff on my tyres, and at the next corner I tried to brake I went straight into (Mat’o) Homola. I’m sorry about that as it was not my intention to push him, and I got a puncture. “

With Nash and Oriola now first and second in the standings, the two Craft-Bamboo drivers are still in hot contention for the drivers’ title, which got away from the team last year in Macau, while the teams’ championship for now almost a certainty with a 119 point lead over Leopard Racing.

“First of all we share engineers, so it’ll be fun when we get to the end of the championship,” said Oriola to TouringCarTimes on the close inner-team battle. “There’s more people that will still be there, but now we go to Singapore and Malaysia, two circuits (James) doesn’t know and won’t be able to test, so we’ll have an advantage there, so we’ll try to create a bit of a gap to go to Macau.”