Jean-Karl Vernay happy with third in Bahrain despite “terrible” start

Jean-Karl Vernay finished third in the first race in Bahrain for Team WRT. The Frenchman had a poor getaway off the grid, as well as an engine issue, but he still managed to finish on the podium to go on and lead the championship equal on points with race winner Roberto Colciago.

Vernay took full blame for his bad start: “My start was just terrible, so I need to work on my coordination because I’ve been struggling with that for a few months now. I was lucky not to spin on the first lap, but after that I tried to be a little bit calm. We had a small engine problem, as sometimes there was no power when I was back on the throttle.”

The Volkswagen driver praised Dusan Borkovic, although the battle with the GE-Force driver cost him a lot of time: “I lost a lot of time behind Borković because he did a good race and was quite fast on the straights so the only way to overtake him was to wait for a mistake and in the end it happened. I think we deserved the result, my team did a great job and the car was really, really quick so let’s see how we do tomorrow.”