Successful first race with Chevrolet for Pepe Oriola

Tuenti Racing Team’s Pepe Oriola took a pair of fourth place finishes on his first outing with the Chevrolet Cruze at Porto, making the switch after driving the SEAT León for the past two seasons.

The 19-year-old Spaniard had a quiet race one, passing Zengõ Motorsport’s Norbert Michelisz who was suffering with a puncture early on and finishing the race in a train of four Chevrolets led by the RML cars of Yvan Muller and Tom Chilton and Nika Racing’s Michel Nykjaer.

In race two the race was more eventful, with a poor start, Oriola dropped two spots to Nykjaer and Chilton, but was able to get ahead of Chilton with a late lunge at Turn 16 and then was involved in a long battle for fifth with Lada’s James Thompson, eventually being able to pass the British driver on lap seven.

Oriola finally moved up to fourth place after a mistake by Münnich Motorsport’s Marc Basseng on the penultimate lap and now moves up to ninth in the drivers’ standings just one point behind Michelisz.

“I’m a little bit upset as I was the fastest Chevrolet in race one, and in race two Nykjaer just beat me to the podium,” said Oriola to TouringCarTimes. “But the feeling is so good, I feel like I can push to the end of the race. I think there’s a lot of positions to win and I can be in front of the races and fight for the podiums, but here it’s a street track and it’s tough to overtake.”

Oriola’s pass on Chilton on lap one was a brave pass but forced RML’s Chilton out wide and as a result he lost four positions due to the loss of momentum.

“I knew that my car was good, I had new tyres on the first lap and I just the saw the gap and went for it. I said sorry to Tom (Chilton) as I knew he lost a lot of positions,” added Oriola.