Craft-Bamboo drivers surprised with fluctuating Opel form

Craft-Bamboo had a difficult day yesterday, as they only scored points with one of their cars, with Pepe Oriola coming home ninth. The Spaniard had an engine problem which caused him to suddenly lose power on the straights.

“I had a really good start and I had the pace, but there was something wrong with the engine”, said Oriola to TouringCarTimes. “In Q2 I had a lambda sensor problem, and during the first race I would just lose power all of a sudden.”

The Spaniard still believes he can score a good result, as long as the engine issue is solved: “We need to investigate and solve the problem, because I lost two places on the first lap to Tom (Coronel) and James (Nash) as I had no power on the Kemmel straight. We are starting on the front row today, and this is my chance to score a win and remain in the hunt for the championship. I’m just hoping to have a trouble-free race and do a good job.”

Team-mate James Nash narrowly missed out on points as Opel’s Pierre-Yves Corthals broke into the top ten with two laps to go, leaving the Brit down in 11th. The SEAT driver believes his qualifying struggles made it all more difficult for him.

“Kajaia got in my way at Blanchimont, which prevented me from getting into Q2 and compromised my weekend”, said Nash. “For sure starting sixteenth doesn’t make my job any easier. I got behind my team-mate Pepe and we started chasing the pack, but it was not an easy task. They are racing hard and honestly we don’t have the car we need to keep up during the fights, we can keep up but can’t fight back.”

When asked to elaborate on the areas that need to be improved in the SEAT, the Brit said there are several factors that give the León TCR some disadvantages compared to the other models. He went as far as saying that if they can’t turn things around performance-wise, the title will be lost by the time the series gets to Salzburg in a month.

“It’s just a combination of factors, we have a bit too much weight and we don’t have a boot, so it’s penalising us on the straights. I think if we don’t make a step forward by Salzburg everything will be lost. Pepe is doing a good job keeping it going, but he’s going to struggle soon. I hope he holds people up, so the field is more packed and I can overtake someone. We need some luck.”

Both drivers were surprised with the Opel Astra TCR’s changeable performance levels, as both Oriola and Nash fought with Corthals for the last couple of laps.

“The situation with the Opels is strange”, said the Spaniard. “One day they are nowhere, then they dominate like in Bahrain in qualifying and the next minute they’re struggling again. Corthals was very strong today, and he came from very far back.”

Nash believes the German cars are able to change engine maps to help the performance of the power units: “Corthals was very quick, more and more every lap, it looked like he was changing engine maps each lap, there was more and more black smoke coming out of the Opel and he came past very easily.”