Mehdi Bennani disappointed not to show potential in race two

Proteam Racing’s Mehdi Bennani had approached the weekend fully focussed on the reversed grid second race, where he shone last season and fought hard with then Münnich Motorsport driver Rob Huff for the win, but that all went to pot when the turbo on his Honda Civic broke at the end of race one.

The Moroccan was almost on the pace of the two factory Hondas during the weekend as well, admittedly ‘accidently’ qualifying too high to get the best possible grid position for the reversed grid race, and then keeping with Gabriele Tarquini throughout race one before his turbo failed on the slowing-down lap.

“My aim was to be P10 in qualifying to fight for pole position for race two, as it’s very important on this circuit and we know you can’t overtake,” Bennani told TouringCarTimes. “In Q2 I was just going to do one safe time to be about eighth, ninth or tenth, but the team told me that at that moment I was in P5, so we tried to put on a second set of new tyres to try and get into Q3, but we ran out of time.

“In race one I was very conservative to not push a lot, first as I was behind Gabriele Tarquini the factory driver, and as the most important thing for me was race two, as I had a very good position for the start. But on my in-lap I saw a lot of smoke when I put on the normal mapping, and the team told me the turbo was broken, and so my weekend was broken, so no start for race two.

“We weren’t lucky but we were lucky that we got to the end of race one, as if it had happened a lap earlier I would not have a result in race one or race two.”