Gabriele Tarquini back up to second in standings after USA
Castrol Honda Racing Team JAS driver Gabriele Tarquini has moved up to second place in the drivers’ standings after taking his second win of the 2013 World Touring Car Championship season at Sonoma Raceway.
The 51-year-old Italian cruised to victory in race two, starting from the outside of the front-row alongside Mehdi Bennani’s BMW, which was his 19th victory in the Championship, moving him ahead of three-time champion Andy Priaulx on the victory table. Tarquini now has the fourth most number of wins in the WTCC, behind the three former works Chevrolet drivers of Yvan Muller, Rob Huff and Alain Menu.
After the race, Tarquini admitted that that the tenth place that he’d originally achieved in qualifying was a deliberate strategy in order to claim pole position for the reversed grid second race.
“I’m extremely happy about the weekend and especially about this achievement,” said Tarquini.
“(In qualifying) I lost the possibility to play for the first three positions, so I decided after a mistake in Turn 1 to play for the tenth place – and (in that sense) it was a perfect lap. After the disqualification of Nykjaer it became much tougher, because not only was another driver in front of me but the only rear-wheel traction car in the top 12, so it was very tough, but the key of my victory was the start. It was quite unbelievable to beat a rear-wheel drive car under acceleration.”
With team-mate Tiago Monteiro setting the fastest lap in race one, and the independent Zengõ Motorsport Honda of Norbert Michelisz the fastest driver in race two, the Hondas are likely to gain more weight at their home race in two weeks’ time.
“I don’t know how many kilos we’ve earned after this weekend, but it’s a great comeback after a lot of double 0s I’ve scored in some places. In Suzuka it will be very tough.”
Reflecting on Honda’s success in the USA today, and in securing the manufacturers’ title this weekend, he added:
“It was very important for Honda to have a good season. Our target was not to win the championship, as we know this championship is very tough and you need a lot of experience, and Yvan and Chevrolet are very strong. They’ve known these cars for seven years, they improve every year and have done a lot of kilometres and they still have small gap in front of us, but our target was to fight with them, to score some victories, to score a lot of points, (to win) the manufacturers’ title, and we’ve achieved the goal.”
Tarquini is now 144 points behind RML’s Yvan Muller, with 165 points remaining from the final three races. Meaning the title is still theoretically open with Tarquini and Nika Racing’s Michel Nykjaer the only drivers within mathematical contention, though it’s more likely that Yvan Muller will secure his fourth title in Japan later this month.
