Gabriele Tarquini believes pole position was possible

Gabriele Tarquini says an error in judgement cost the Lukoil Racing Team pole position this weekend at Sonoma Raceway, with an unexpected second run in qualifying needed to defend against the Chevrolets.

The Italian was just 0.236 seconds behind Alain Menu, who had gone quicker on his second run in the ten minute session, with Tarquini unable to respond in the SEAT León WTCC.

Tarquini had also gone out for a second run, but went wide out of Turn 5 on his final flying lap, and was unable to respond to the three Chevrolets, but with Yvan Muller and Rob Huff unable to improve their times, only lost one spot to Swiss-driver Alain Menu.

“To be honest it was a mistake, maybe my mistake or my engineer’s mistake, as before the session I was sure there wasn’t time for two runs,” said Tarquini to TouringCarTimes. “I’d lost a lot of time on my in-lap, and I started my second run with two minutes to go so I destroyed my tyres (on my out-lap).”

Tarquini was fastest in FP2, and seems to be right on the pace of the Chevrolets this weekend, again carrying no ballast in his SEAT León whilst the Chevrolets run the maximum ballast due to their results at Salzburg, Portimão and Curitiba.

“I think that for them it was very important to score pole position here because it’s their home race, but I was very close, I was very close in practice, very close in qualifying. My car was not very good yesterday, but I’ve changed quite a lot in the right direction during free practice and qualifying.”