Honda delighted with top three lockout at Slovakia

In just the third race of the season, Honda have locked out the top three spots on the grid at the Slovakiaring with Gabriele Tarquini taking his 17th career pole position in the World Touring Car Championship.

Tarquini set the fastest time set by a WTCC car at the circuit in an official session during Q1 with a time of 2:10.308. The 51-year-old made a small mistake on his run in Q2 which meant he wasn’t able to better that time, but with a lap of 2:10.773 was still able to claim pole position ahead of team-mate Tiago Monteiro.

“The (Q1) time was unbelievable, I surprised also myself,” said Tarquini. “My dashboard didn’t work so when (the team) told me the time I thought maybe they dropped one second and was wrong.”

Team-mate Tiago Monteiro also enjoyed his best qualifying of the season after two disastrous weekends at Monza and Marrakech, and was just a tenth off of Tarquini’s time in Q2.

“I was in the slipstream of Gabriele and I think it was possible to use this advantage to be on pole, but I got a bit too greedy in the last corner and braked just a little bit too late,” said Monteiro. “I’m happy and I hope to convert this into good points tomorrow.”

On whether he’ll be fighting his team-mate for the victory tomorrow, Monteiro added:
“The great thing is I’m fighting against the best driver in the world…it’s always going to be difficult to fight and to overtake. I’m already very happy to be close and fighting with him and learning every day, but tomorrow’s a different story and I think we know each other enough to respect each other and I know he knows that I will try what I can and of course he will try what he can, but I think we are professional enough to understand how this works, and we will fight hard but fair.”

Tarquini reflected on the pole position with the positive that with Monteiro and Zengõ Motorsport’s Norbert Michelisz in position three, Honda have a strong chance to take the first victory for the new Civic in tomorrow’s races.

“We can use the small experience we have from here as we simulated long runs in the test in the last year’s car,” said Tarquini. “At least we have three chances (pointing to Monteiro and Michelisz) to win with a Honda.”

Honda Europe’s Motorsport Director William De Braekeleer was elated with the manufacturer’s success in qualifying this weekend.

“We had some hopes for the Slovakiaring as we used this track for developing the car, so we had some references and we had some ideas of where we would be, but to be honest I would never have bet on 1-2-3 after qualifying,” he said to TouringCarTimes.

“First we are happy to have a 1-2-3, but I’m more happy for both the teams, as both have recently been through a long period of bad luck, especially Zengõ, and it could affect their motivation at the end of the day…today finally they could see by themselves their car is at the same level as ours and it can run quick and I’m happy for them.”