Honda to continue fast-track development over next few weeks

The Castrol Honda World Touring Car team will continue its rapid development programme over the next few weeks to prepare for when the team’s two cars leave Europe for the final five rounds in July.

After struggling for pace in Monza, the next round of upgrades saw the Honda Civic grab pole position at Marrakech and follow that up last weekend with a 1-2-3 result in both qualifying and the first race, which has seen Gabriele Tarquini close in on Yvan Muller for the drivers’ title fight.

“We worked on the lack of speed problem after Monza,” said Honda Racing Team JAS Team Principal Alessandro Mariani to TouringCarTimes.

“Monza was traumatic for us, as testing by ourselves we couldn’t compare our level with the top speed of the competitors. After Monza it was clear we were suffering there, so we were able to modify the intake and in Marrakech, a circuit still demanding speed, we were much more competitive, not as much as we were here (in Slovakia).”

Ahead of the Hungarian round, Honda are confident the Civic will also be competitive, with the characteristics of the circuit favouring the Civic; but after two strong weekends the car will gain 30kg of penalty ballast, running at the heaviest it’s been in the WTCC to date at 1,180kg.

“Budapest should be very good for our car, it’s very good in the corners and in the braking, whilst Salzburg should be difficult, so then we hope to have some new parts to be better,” said Mariani.

As last year, from the Portuguese round of the WTCC, all of the Championship’s cars will be transported by ferry for the fly-away rounds in Argentina, USA, Japan, China and Macau, and so will not return to base until after the season’s finished.

The builders of the last new car to the Championship, Arena Motorsport, built a third car so they could continue their development whilst the race cars were in transit, but Mariani says that’s not an option for Honda this year.

“Unfortunately we don’t have a test car because if the new regulations come in 2014 it doesn’t make a lot of sense to develop one, so we need to calibrate what we need now for the final part of the Championship. Fortunately now Gabriele is still fighting for the drivers’ title, we’re not so far from Muller, so now we have to collect as much information as possible and try to overtake Muller in the second part of the season.”

The WTCC has yet to formalise the new regulations for the 2014 season, but the teams are working from a prelimary framework which has allowed the manufacturer’s to start work on the new cars, which means Honda are already starting work on the next evolution of the Honda Civic.

“Because we are already working on the 2014 project, we’re having to split our focus in a different direction. Now in my opinion is the time to push with the 2013 Championship development, because if we test, and as we plan to test very soon, we have time to update the car to do what’s necessary to develop the performance, because by July it’s too late because then the cars are already far away from Europe, so the strategic time is the next three or four weeks.”