Photo: TCR Media

Jordi Gené: “The lap time I did is the best the car could do”

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Jordi Gené is happy with his qualifying performance today after putting his Craft-Bamboo Lukoil fifth on the grid for the first race, despite carrying 20kg of success ballast following his results in Monza last weekend. The Spanish driver also concurs with SEAT stablemate Stefano Comini that the Honda team are able to play a strategic game with the performance of their car during the race weekends.

In qualifying, Gené was just over three-tenths of a second off of pole-sitter Kevin Gleason’s time in the WestCoast Racing Honda Civic, and just over a tenth behind the fastest SEAT León driver, that of Stefano Comini.

“Today, with the ballast here you can feel the car is a little bit lazy up the hill, but even then it’s just one-tenth from the best SEAT, so I think the lap time I did is the best lap time the car could do,” said Gené to TouringCarTimes.

However, when it comes to race day, Gené views the day as a points gathering exercise, with the tricky Salzburgring circuit not known for much overtaking.

“If you take a big risk there’s a good chance you won’t finish,” he added. “It’s not like Monza when there’s plenty of space to overtake, it’s not so easy I don’t think. Although I’ve never raced here; I asked Pepe where you can overtake and he said it’s not possible, so I said OK, thank you.”

Reflecting on Comini’s post-qualifying comments about the performance of the WestCoast Racing Hondas throughout the weekend, the experienced Spanish driver admitted that the Swiss driver has a bit of a point, but was more measured.

“We came here on Friday and they’re three seconds off, then Saturday one second off, then in qualifying they’ve done the speed they need. With the SEATs, look at our lap times (throughout the weekend), even on Friday we were doing 1:27s, it’s easy to see that since we got here we’re at the limit of our car, and this happens every time,” he explained.

“It is what it is, but we know some circuits are better for some cars and some circuits are better for others. Their car is quicker at the circuits where you have to accelerate, and this is a circuit that’s like that. I hope that in the ones that come the SEAT is a little bit better. As a driver, you always want to win and want to win everywhere, but you can’t always do that and that is something I understand.”