SEAT may debut new engine at Monza

SUNRED Engineering are set to introduce their new 1.6 litre turbo engine at the next race at Monza in three weeks time, with all drivers expecting to be running the engine at the Hungaroring.

The SUNRED team are still running with the once dominant 2.0 litre TDI engine for all six of their drivers, but despite appearing closer to the Chevrolet team at Zolder, are still hoping to have the new engine which will give them the same engine specification as BMW and Chevrolet.

Gabriele Tarquini has qualified in third place for race one at the Belgian track, just under three-tenths of a second down on the pole sitting Chevrolet of Rob Huff.

However, Tarquini’s lap record from last year still stands, with Rob Huff two-tenths slower than it during today’s qualifying session, despite Huff beating his own lap record at Curitiba by almost two seconds, leading some drivers to suspect that Chevrolet are holding back even in qualifying.

Tarquini’s best lap today was just under three-tenths off of Huff, and effectively half a second slower than he managed at Zolder last year with 1:38.723, with SUNRED team-mate Tiago Monteiro not far off with 1:38.902 in Qualifying 2.

With SEAT possibly introducing up to two new engines at Monza, it is likely that Tarquini and Monteiro will be the first recipients of the new engines, before the team’s independents’ trophy eligible drivers follow at Hungary in June.

This will leave Polestar’s Robert Dahlgren and Proteam’s Fabio Fabiani as the only drivers without the new specification engine in the 2011 WTCC.