Temperatures rise within Craft-Bamboo as Oriola and Nash clash in practice

Although all the words of Pepe Oriola were all about supporting his team-mate James Nash in his bid for the championship this weekend, it seems more like the 22-year-old Spaniard has not given up hope in overhauling the 33-point gap, after the two made contact at the start of practice, and were baffled by each other’s behaviour afterwards.

Oriola and Nash would finish the session second and fifth, both outpaced by WestCoast Racing’s Gianni Morbidelli, and separated by the two Leopard Racing Volkswagen Golfs of Stefano Comini and Jean-Karl Vernay, the only two drivers who can deprive them of their first TCR International Series title on Sunday.

On their first flying lap, Nash and Oriola made contact on the way into Lisboa. Oriola had drafted his way back past Nash’s SEAT and turned into the corner in front of his British team-mate, with the two making minor contact.

“I guess James is feeling a lot of pressure, as I took his slipstream, he let me pass and then hit me at Lisboa,” said Oriola to TouringCarTimes. “I don’t know why. I guess he’s under pressure and seeing the championship is not as easy as he thought, especially with (Stefano) Comini.”

Nash’s view on the incident differed, with the 30-year-old accusing his team-mate of playing games.

“He let me go at the beginning of the lap, so I didn’t see why he’d want to come back past me, but he decided he did,” said Nash to TouringCarTimes. “I was on the dirty side and locking up slightly, and he decided to cut across, so I was a bit surprised by it all, but he won’t do it again. He’s trying to prove a point, but he doesn’t need to prove it to me.

“He does things like that through the season, and that’s why he’s in the position he’s in,” he added.

Oriola appeared to also backtrack on his pre-race talk of fully supporting his team-mate in the championship battle, with Leopard’s Stefano Comini just 17 points behind in the standings. The Spaniard was clearly in the mindset that the title is still available to all of the top four drivers, with 55 points available from the Guia Race of Macau weekend.

“There are the four of us fighting for the championship, and no one wants to give anything,” said Oriola as he referred to when during the last half of the session the two Craft-Bamboo cars and the two Leopard VWs were scrambling for track position and breaking slipstreams. “We had one good lap, but then the tyres were gone,” added Oriola. “I’m sure Gianni had new tyres, as the difference is huge, and I had a lot of understeer. The difference when there’s low grip is massive here this year.”

“(As a team) we need to talk about possible situations of points,” continued Oriola. “If I’m leading the race and James is fourth and Sergey’s third, and James will win the championship if Sergey lets him through, what are they going to do? I don’t know. We have to have a big meeting to see, the priority is to make sure we just win the championship for the team.”

Although Nash wound up fifth, the 2013 WTCC independents’ champion was comfortable with his pace considering his level of success ballast and the way the session panned out.

“I don’t think anyone got a clear lap really, so it’ll be interesting to see the sector times,” he explained. “To be just two-tenths off Pepe with 30kg is pretty good around here. I also don’t know who was running new tyres.”