Photo: Honda Racing

Norbert Michelisz still leads the independents’, while Hugo Valente gains ground

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After grabbing Honda’s first TC1 pole position in race one in Motegi, the Hungarian went on to finish in second overall and take his eighth Yokohama independents’ class win of the season, his fourth in a row, but a DNF in race two saw Hugo Valente grab his fourth class win and close up to the leading bunch.

Michelisz picked up the mantle following Gabriele Tarquini’s mistake in qualifying to put the Zengő Motorsport Honda Civic on pole position ahead of Citroën’s José María López, but was unable to keep the Argentinian behind at the start and had to settle for second overall, but claimed the independents’ class victory, while he was caught in the melee with López and Sébastien Loeb Racing’s Mehdi Bennani at the start of race two and was clawing back positions before retiring with an engine problem.

“We knew there were some areas we have to work on, and this was going to be a very important event for us, and we showed a step in the right direction with pole position,” said Michelisz to TouringCarTimes.

“I think race performance was quite strong, particularly in the second race. In the first race, Pechito (López) was faster than us, but still, as a driver you can feel progress and looking in from the outside, maybe it’s small steps, but it’s small steps in the right direction.”

Valente celebrated his best result of the season, and his second podium, and is now the top placed Chevrolet driver in the overall standings, and is now just six points behind Mehdi Bennani for third in the independents’ classification and nine behind Tom Chilton.

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“I would like to congratulate Campos and RML because they did a good job,” said Valente. “We’re not able to do as much testing as the others I think and funnily enough it’s my worst weekend in terms of performance but here I am making my best result, but the reverse grid is like this.

“Today we were more consistent and I only lost one place (at the start). That was great and I just carried on and Rob (Huff) did a great job holding everybody behind, which helped me and him I think at the same time. I’m very happy to be here scoring a lot of points in the championship and in the Yokohama Drivers’ Trophy.”