Photo: WTCC Media

Norbert Michelisz: “These are the three happiest weeks of my life”

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Zengő Motorsport’s Norbert Michelisz claimed his third career pole position at Motegi, two of which are now in Japan with Honda, and the 31-year-old newlywed declared that the last three weeks have been the happiest of his life after taking the first pole position for the TC1 generation Honda Civic today.

Although Gabriele Tarquini had become the favourite after the Italian had topped all the practice sessions throughout the weekend, but after a mistake in the second part of qualifying, Tarquini missed the cut to make the top five shoot-out, which became an affair between four Citroëns and Michelisz’s lone Honda.

Out last courtest of being fastest in Q2, Michelisz produced a time under pressure which was even faster than his time in Q2, setting the WTCC lap record for the circuit as 1:55.596.

“On the way to this press conference I thought to myself these were the three most happy weeks of my life because of my wedding, because of the fantastic weekend so far and regarding pole position,” said Michelisz. “For me the most important thing is to be there from the first corner.to be honest we struggled with that all season. I knew we had some updates but I was not expecting a step like this, so I have to say to everyone involved they did a fantastic job.”

Honda have worked over the summer, working with Michelisz along with the two factory drivers Tarquini and Tiago Monteiro to improve the Civic WTCC, which the Hungarian says was key to the new-found pace in the Civic.

“We did an intensive programme during the summer where I was able to join the factory team for one day of testing. I cannot go into details, I hope you can all understand, but, like I said, we know the weak points and I think in motorsport it’s very important to know where your strong points are but even more important to know exactly what your weak points are. We discovered many areas we have to improve and hopefully this is the first step in the right direction to fight constantly for this kind of position.”