Pointless weekend in Argentina for on-the-pace Lada pair

LADA Sport Lukoil’s hopes for a point filled weekend all came to nothing in Argentina, despite the Granta showing good form throughout the meeting, with good top speed and some competitive times set during the various sessions.

British driver James Thompson narrowly missed out on a vital top ten grid position in qualifying with just one run in the ten minute Q2 session, whilst team-mate Mikhail Kozlovskiy initially qualified in 18th but later was sent to the back of the grid after the team breached parc fermé rules by connecting a laptop to the car prematurely.

James Thompson was battling for points in both races, but driveshaft failures linked to contact saw him having to retire the Granta, first in race one after contact with Tom Coronel’s ROAL BMW, and then dropping out of eighth place in the final stages of the race, following an incident with the Münnich Motorsport SEAT of Rob Huff.

Whilst team-mate Kozlovskiy’s first race lasted just one corner, taken out by contact by an unknown assailant, and then managed to finish 16th in race two after starting from 23rd and last on the grid.

The 23-year-old Russian however believed it was a promising weekend for the team overall, even though the scorecard doesn’t show much at the end of it.

“This circuit is quite special as it’s so wide so you can try so many lines in all the corners, so if you really know the circuit as we saw with López you can be really fast,” said Kozlovskiy to TouringCarTimes.

“There are so many different lines you can take and there’s not enough time to do all the set-up you’d want.

“We made a tactical mistake in qualifying as we used only one new set of tyres. I was P10, but then everyone put on a second set and improved.

“I think in general it was a very positive weekend, except perhaps the result of the race, but this year is a learning year for me to try and adapt.”

Team-mate James Thompson also believed there was more reason to be positive coming out of the weekend despite the double DNF.

“The reliability of the car has been good through the whole of the first part of the season, so I reckon that the driveshaft problems we experienced were caused by the contact we had in both races,” said Thompson.

“On the whole, I can say that the pace of the car and its overall performance are excellent now. Also, this has been a great circuit that’s really interesting and fast. We actually reached a top speed of 240kph here and we were in the top 10 in both races. To sum it up, there were definitely more positive moments than negative ones this weekend, which is encouraging.”