Jordi Gené says he will fight for his own championship

Jordi Gené qualified fourth at Macau, and the Craft-Bamboo Lukoil driver, who is now 35 points shy of championship leader Stefano Comini, is eager to fight to keep his own title hopes alive, despite the distance between him and the Swiss, and with team-mate Pepe Oriola the closest threat to Comini

“I could have gone quicker than this, but I knew I couldn’t push to the maximum,” said Gené to TouringCarTimes. “I was obviously pushing, but at the same time I kept a safety margin, because crashing would have meant the end of my title hopes, so I made sure I took the car home in one piece.”

The Spaniard says he felt he was capable of shaving about half a second off his lap time: “I could have been five tenths quicker, but the thing is that up the hill I was about ten centimetres off the wall. I know that being one centimetre away from the wall gives you about one tenth for each corner, so that’s where the margin is. I had to choose between risks and a good lap time but much safer, and I chose the latter.”

The Craft-Bamboo Lukoil driver implied he will fight for his own title, rather than aiding team-mate Pepe Oriola, who is just four points behind Comini for the championship. Oriola starts behind Gené on the grid for the first race of the day on Sunday, with the grid for race two decided by race one’s result.

“I needed to be around Stefano (Comini) and Pepe (Oriola), and I did that. I am satisfied but not fully happy. If I came second it would have been perfect, but I am better off fourth than 12th, so that is fine. I did what I had to do.”

Talking about the races, the Spaniard knows it is going to be a different story compared to qualifying: “We made sure we had an ‘easy’ car set-up-wise, you need that for the races in particular. I want to fight and see what happens. This is Macau, so you can’t be sure about anything.”