Photo: WTCC Media

Trouble free first test for Thompson and Lada

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James Thompson made his WTCC return in free practice at the Hungaroring for Lada, setting competitive times in the Granta Sport on its first run in the Championship.

The four-time WTCC race winner last raced in the FIA World Touring Car Championship in 2009, also for Lada, but since then has kept busy in other series, winning the 2010 FIA European Touring Car Cup and racing in the 2011 Scandinavian and British Touring Car Championships before announcing his return with Lada at the start of this season.

“To get out there was a bit of a fantastic effort,” said Thompson to TouringCarTimes. “The guys have been working on the car all night, and haven’t even been to bed yet…we did the session trouble free, (there are) a few little things that need a bit of attention but you’d expect that from a brand new car.”

Thompson was 19th fastest overall, 1.8 seconds down on Yvan Muller’s time in the Chevrolet Cruze, in a session where the times were so close in the midfield another half a second would have put him in the top ten.

“There’s a couple of issues that we just need to resolve before we can start work in earnest, so hopefully we’ll try that before the next session and qualifying’s going to be a bit of a gamble. We’re treating every session as a test session, it’s not as though we’ve come here saying we’re going to blitz everything, if we don’t start at the back it’s a result.”

“Bear in mind I’ve never been here before as well…and it’s not like we’ve got a definitive set-up for the car. It’s only going to go quicker from this point onwards.”

The Lada Granta Cup will also support the WTCC this weekend at the Hungaroring, whilst Lada will skip the next round of the WTCC at the Salzburgring for logistical reasons before returning for the final round of the European part of this year’s WTCC at Portimao on June 3rd, with hopes that this will turn into a full manufacturer programme in 2013.

“It’s like any programme down here,” said Thompson, “The manufacturers can decide to do what they want…but we’re here, we’re doing it and the intention is to do this and lead into next year and setting the target to achieve something serious around year two or year three, and will stick to that plan unless we’re told otherwise.”