Honda Racing Team Sweden test hampered by rain in Slovakia

Honda Racing Team Sweden and Rickard Rydell’s preparations for this weekend’s round of the World Touring Car Championship have been hindered by rain. The team had stayed behind at the Slovakiaring to perform some much needed testing ahead of the race at Paul Ricard on Sunday.

Rydell, readying himself for only his third race of the season, has limited experience of the Paul Ricard circuit, but had some experience recently at the Slovakiaring after attending launch event for Honda the week prior for the new Civic Type-R.

With Honda Racing Team Sweden at least having a baseline set-up for the track after Néstor Girolami drove the car last weekend, scoring points on his debut, the team opted to stay on to test but ran into inclement weather.

“We can’t seem to get much decent testing in this year,” lamented Rydell. “We were massively unlucky with the weather in Slovakia at the beginning of the week; it was great over the weekend and is good again now, but on our particular day of testing the rain was pouring down. The plan was to do some set-up comparisons and continue to evaluate our Öhlins damper settings, but we will now have to try and fit that into our programme for Friday free practice (in France).”

“It’s been almost ten years since I last drove at Paul Ricard, and that was on the longer circuit, so I don’t have a lot of current experience of the track. Still, the aim remains unchanged; we want to qualify in the midfield and score points in both of the races come Sunday.”