Gabriele Tarquini: “I’ve never had traffic issues like this in ten years”

Honda’s Gabriele Tarquini has called for penalties to be handed out to Citroën’s Yvan Muller and Ma Qing Hua following a pair of incidents in qualifying, with Ma blocking Tarquini’s second run in the first segment, and with the Italian also held up by Muller in Q2 as the Citroën driver appeared make a play for a slow lap to set the reverse grid pole.

Tarquini along with Tom Coronel both lost time behind Ma’s Citroën in the first part of qualifying, with Coronel held up on his final run while Tarquini was able to make another run and make it into Q2.

“The big issue was the traffic, I don’t know if the general attitude of the drivers have changed, but I’ve never had traffic issues in ten years as these last two races,” said Tarquini to TouringCarTimes.

“Traffic cost me Q2 in Paul Ricard, and today I was very lucky as I had a lot of new tyres. I had a problem with (Néstor) Girolami on my first attempt, and then I had a big problem with Ma (Qing Hua) and Yvan (Muller) on my second attempt, I was lucky to have no traffic on my third.

“Then In Q2, I had a big problem with Yvan as well because he was very slow on the track and concentrating on his P10 and this was really unfair as you should be off the line if you want to go slow.

“What happened in qualifying today was a big mess. Tom Coronel was slowed by Ma as well, and the answer from Ma when I protested against him was that he had traffic as well so what do you want? This is really unfair, if you have a problem with another driver, you don’t just do the same to somebody else, so this is a really bad attitude and if the race director and the stewards don’t do anything they’re saying it’s OK to just be in the way all the time. For me, Ma and Yvan must be penalised or it’ll become a big mess.”

Ma explained that the incident with Gabriele was because of a miscommunication within the team

“In front of me was Yvan Muller and I reported to the team he was very slow, and they told me he was on his out-lap,” explained Ma to TouringCarTimes.

“So I tried to make a gap between us, but then my engineer said he had an issue with the car and asked me to try to overtake him. But at that time Gabriele just arrived, but then Yvan didn’t let me go as I guess it was not easy to find a place to let me pass as it’s a narrow street track. I didn’t really (block Gabriele) on purpose, and I was also one of the drivers who was also disturbed.”