Jaap van Lagen disappointed over crash

Jaap van Lagen and Lada were on their way to taking their best ever finish in the first race of the World Touring Car Championship weekend at Oschersleben. But an incident, just one lap from the end, with Nicola Larini ended their chances.
“An over enthusiastic competitor pushed me out in the last corner of the very last lap, which was a real disappointment,” said van Lagen.

Thanks to a rain shuffled qualifying session, van Lagen started fourth and was able to hold many of the top runners behind him for the majority of the race.

“In the first corner I got hits from a lot of cars and there was quite a lot of body damage,” van Lagen said.

“Even so I could keep my pace with that of the front-runners and I was comfortable in fifth place until at about 3 laps before the end I started struggling with tire wear.”

Team boss Viktor Shapovalov was nonetheless pleased with the overall performance of the Lada’s during the race weekend.

“Having got so close to the points it is of course disappointing to have been denied the reward that the team deserves, but that’s racing. I am really happy with Jaap’s performance which was brilliant.

Especially his pace in race 1 which was at the same level as our competitors. We will simply add this experience to our growing knowledge of WTCC competition and come back even stronger next time,” said Shapovalov.