Honda hope to take the fight to Yvan Muller on race day

Despite RML’s Yvan Muller setting his eighth pole position of the 2013 WTCC season at the Guia circuit of Macau, with a one second margin of second place, the Honda team still hope to take the fight to the four-time champion on race day, with the Frenchman chasing his first win since Argentina back in August.

Carrying the same ballast as the Chevrolet Cruze this weekend, the two Honda Racing Team JAS Civics qualified in second and third positions, with Tiago Monteiro ahead of Gabriele Tarquini. The Portuguese driver has been the faster of the two drivers in every session this weekend, and hopes to take advantage of the WTCC’s most unpredictable race to hopefully score his second win of the season on Sunday.

“Macau is the best place to have a surprise,” said Monteiro. “The start will be more important than anywhere else, and if we have a good start, we can fight. We need to start better than (Muller), that’s the key point, otherwise it will be tough. But so many things can happen here, yellow flags, red flags, punctures, crashes…it’s a really special race and we’ll keep our hopes high and fight until the end.”

Monteiro’s team-mate Gabriele Tarquini, who just needs to finish ahead of RML’s Tom Chilton in race one in order to secure second in the drivers’ standings, also believes the Hondas are capable of winning this weekend if things go their way on Sunday.

“We are in a very good position tomorrow for the race,” said Tarquini. “The race is totally different from qualifying. Normally our car is better in the races than in qualifying, so I think that tomorrow we can try to beat (Yvan), as there is no reason why we can’t. I think the car is good enough to have good pace and at this track you can always have some problem…any small mistake can cost you a lot.”