Kevin Gleason happy with third despite ballast

Kevin Gleason finished today’s qualifying session in third, despite being in second for most of Q2 before being demoted by Craft-Bamboo Lukoil’s Pepe Oriola. The American was full of praise for his team-mate Gianni Morbidelli’s work with the updated version of the Honda Civic TCR.

“First of all congratulations to Gianni and the team for the work they’ve done on the Step 2 car. Of course my car was quite competitive as well, I am pretty happy but not fully because I didn’t get pole position and I am a racer, so I always want to be at the front obviously. Of course the success ballast did not help.”

Talking about tomorrow’s race, Gleason believes the start will be the key to the race: “We need to get a good start in such a competitive race, we need to stay at the front to have a shot at the podium, so we need to focus on that.”

When asked a specific question, the American denied there will be any team orders to help Morbidelli: “I think we have fought each other all year very cleanly, in a hard but fair way. Things will not change tomorrow, so the guideline is ‘no contact’, the rest is pure racing and I obviously want to try to win if possible.”

Gleason carries 20 kilos of success ballast after a positive outing in Singapore.