Pierre-Yves Corthals vows to be back and to win the title in 2017
Pierre-Yves Corthals says he plans to be back on the grid for the 2017 TCR Benelux season to win the drivers’ title, after he and co-driver Frédéric Caprasse narrowly missed out on winning with the new Opel Astra at Mettet.
Corthals and Caprasse has a strong latter part of the season and slowly nipped away at Boutsen Ginion driver Stéphane Lémeret’s championship lead, after the Honda drive had built up a healthy lead during the first two race meetings at Spa and Zandvoort.
Both had poor weekends in The Netherlands, but while Caprasse scored a win in the second sprint race at the season finale at Circuit Jules Tacheny, Lémeret’s co-driver Norbert Michelisz won all three races in which he was pitted against Corthals, with the two coming together in the final race, which put a dampener on the end of the season for the 41-year-old ex-WTCC racer.
“It’s bad to finish (the season) like this, but it’s great to see all the development on the Opel, as they’ve built the car in one year, while the others have built their cars in two,” said Corthals to TouringCarTimes.
“It’s also really good to finish second in the championship in our first year. We’ve won the TCR Europe Trophy as well, which is a good title for us.”
Corthals and Caprasse finished 57.5 points behind Lémeret, with 150 available at each weekend. The Opel pair’s worst weekend was at Zandvoort, where they picked up just 17 points which counted as their drop score round, while Lémeret’s was his 54 points at TT Assen.
The season closed one week later at Mettet, with Manfred Stohl’s STARD organisation revealing their new Kia Cee’d customer TCR car. Audi also put on display their new RS 3 LMS, while Peugeot’s Belgium-Luxembourg arm ran a factory 308 to two podium finishes for Fred Bouvy and Aurélien Comte, competing against the Honda Benelux supported Boutsen Ginion cars and DG Sport Competition’s Opel, which also had backing from Opel Belgium, marking three factory entries at the finale for the all-new series.
“It’s really good news that TCR arrived in Benelux,” added Corthals. “It’s also the first time in 15 years that we’ve had a national championship with importer interest. We need more cars for sure, compared with Germany for example, but for a first year it’s not so bad.”
Corthals also laid out his goal for next year, as the team work to return and fight back with the Astra in the series’ second season.
“I hope to be back next year, and this time we must win for sure,” he concluded.
