Thompson realistic after solid Priora debut

On his return to the WTCC in Porto last weekend James Thompson gave the new Lada Priora its debut, recording “trouble free” finishes in both races. After qualifying 22nd, Thompson brought the car home in 18th and 15th positions in the two rounds, while for Brands Hatch the car will enjoy a weight discount, giving it parity with the Lada 110.

Speaking after the weekend, Thompson said;

“We have to be realistic, and with a completely new car that has not been tested before our job is clearly to try and improve in every area. However, the Priora starts off from a good base and it is now a question of developing it step by step.

The pace of the Lada noticeably improved during the weekend, allowing the car to run as high as 13th in Sunday morning’s warm-up.

With no testing and only a pre-event shakedown in Belgium, the meeting was essentially an extended test opportunity, but one that proved useful for the English driver.

“We achieved everything we wanted to do, which was get the car to the finish, confirm its reliability, and deliver it back in one piece, so that everyone can now concentrate on development rather than having to fix things.

There are some things on the car that we have been improving all weekend, so now we need to continue this process in a methodical way. I think we’ve managed to find a good base level of reliability so now we can just focus on trying to make the car quicker. I’ve enjoyed the weekend a lot and I’m looking forward now to racing on home territory at Brands Hatch in two weeks time.”

However, all was not entirely well, as being newly homologated, the Priora was forced to carry 40kg of compensation weight, making it 60kg heavier than the two Lada 110s of Jaap van Lagen and Kirill Ladygin.

Unsurprisingly this left the Priora bottom of the rankings through the speed traps throughout the weekend, something which Thompson wasn’t happy about.

“The fact that it is a new homologation of car, which the rules give a significant weight penalty to, is not really helping us. But we had a reliable run, so I’m confident that we can improve from here on.”

But ahead of his home round of the WTCC, Thompson will have received some good news from the FIA, as the Priora’s minimum weight was reduced to 1150 kilograms, bringing it into line with the older 110 model.