Jean-Karl Vernay disappointed to miss out on Guia Race victory after poor starts

Leopard Racing’s Jean-Karl Vernay finished second in the 2016 Guia Race of Macau to Portugual’s Tiago Monteiro, after falling behind the WestCoast Racing Honda driver at the start of the race.

The Frenchman had similarly lost ground at the start of the earlier qualifying race, but was able to dash back past the Honda Civic before Lisboa and hold on to second behind his Volkswagen team-mate Stefano Comini.

In the main race, Vernay was able to pass Comini at the restart and began closing on Monteiro, but ran out of laps in the incident-shortened event.

“In three events I’ve had terrible starts,” said Vernay to TouringCarTimes. “Today the start was poor and Tiago was able to go in front, but then I was really quick and the car was much better. But with just two (racing) laps, I had one lap to pass Stefano, and one other lap to maybe have a chance on Tiago. On the last lap, Tiago was really quick and I was not able to be close enough in sector two.

“We really need to understand what’s happened, as at the beginning of the season our starts were great, but since Thailand they’ve not been so good.”