Interview with Vito Postiglione

Vito Postiglione joined Proteam Motorsport ahead of the FIA World Touring Car Championship race at Marrakech. But in an interview with TouringCarTimes the 32 year old driver reveals that he will not race at Pau.
“I’ve had some accidents in Marrakech, and the car was damaged pretty badly,” said Postiglione to TouringCarTimes.com.

“The trucks came back from Morocco only on Thursday night, and there was no chance that the team could fix it before next event. I should be back in Valencia, anyway: by then the team will have had enough time to repair the car.”

Postiglione had a hard weekend at Marrakech and wants to forget his WTCC debut after several crashes.

“It was just a nightmare! First of all I have to say that I didn’t do any tests before Marrakech: all I had done was doing the shakedowns in Magione for Proteam before the cars were shipped to Brazil, in late January, which meant that I hadn’t seen the car for months. The lack of budget meant I couldn’t do any tests before my debut race”

The Italian hit the wall during the practice ahead of the races at Marrakech which meant a lot of work for the guys in the team.

“I had brake problems and hit the wall. I managed to send the car into a spin, so that I damaged the right rear part of the car, but the suspension and the bodywork were heavily damaged. On Friday night the guys at Proteam worked until 3 a.m. in order to give me the best possible car, but it just didn’t feel alright anymore. I was pretty near Porteiro before that accident.”

Not long after the car was repaired and sent back out, Postiglione had to go back in to the pits for repairs again after hitting the wall once more.

“One of the hubs broke, probably due to overstess caused by the high kerbs of Marrakech, which sent me into the wall again. The car got damaged again, although not as badly as the day before, but still it added some new difficulties to my weekend.”

While the crashes hindered him from focusing on the speed out on the track, he feels that he would have been on the pace.

“Without the two accidents, I think I could have been around Porteiro, slightly behind him, which would have been great. But that’s racing: during a weekend you need luck, too, and that’s what I lacked of, basically.

I managed to finish race one, but during the next session I touched Stefano D’Aste and went into the wall again, and my race was then over. I’m very disappointed, but I’m looking forward to Valencia now.”

Postiglione’s previous experiences span to GT cars. The Italian most recently drove a Ferrari F430, a car with a lot more power than the BMW 320si.

“Of course the engine is less powerful than the Ferrari. The F430 has some 500 bhp, while the S2000 cars ‘only’ have 280 bhp. But what I noticed is that the handling of these touring cars is amazing, it’s just another world compared to the other cars I’ve been in.”

Despite all the crashes of his debut, Postiglione is keen to continue in the WTCC and hopes for a full season next year.

“It was fantastic, I’d never been to a WTCC race before, I’d only watched it on television. If you watch it from home, you miss 50% of the fun of it.

“It is a great opportuinity for me, I just want to have enough experience at the end of this year, so that I can work to try to find the budget for the whole 2010 season.”

The Italian has got nothing other than positive words about Proteam Motorsport.

“Proteam has got great human resources, which enables them to field the competitive car we’ve seen during the first two races of the championship.

I’m really happy to be able to race for them, and I hope to score some great results in the future, not only for me but also for them! They made a fantastic job during the Marrakech weekend.”

The 32 year old Postiglione started racing in 1999 in the Renault Mégane Trophy. The highlight of his career was the Ferrari World title in 2007, when he also won the Italian version of the one-make series. He started driving for Proteam in 2006, when he finished runner-up in the Ferrari Italian series, as well as in the World championship.

The interview was done in co-operation with stopandgo.tv.