Hugo Valente: “My priority was to stay in the WTCC, but it nearly didn’t happen”

Lada Sport’s new signing Hugo Valente thought his chances of being back on the grid in the World Touring Car Championship were almost over just a month ago, but the reshuffle of drivers at Honda and Lada led to the opportunity to make the move from a privateer to a factory driver.

The 23-year-old Frenchman finished on the podium three times in 2015, taking a haul of 120 points to ninth place in the drivers’ championship in his second full season in the WTCC, and for 2016 he will join Nicky Catsburg and Gabriele Tarquini in a revised line-up at Lada following the departures of Nicolas Lapierre and Rob Huff.

The deal started to be put together just at the beginning of last month, which was kickstarted when Tarquini was dropped by Honda, which then opened up the drivers’ market for the final few factory drives with Citroën and Volvo having already confirmed the drivers for their two-car programmes.

“I’m very happy,” said Valente to TouringCarTimes. “It’s been a difficult winter…I had a great end of the season in Qatar but then nothing came up. We knew that Citroën were going down to two cars, and that there were three privateer Citroëns but the budgets (for those) were just ridiculous.

“Honda didn’t know if they were going to have two or three cars, then we heard that Norbi (Norbert Michelisz) was going to be one of the drivers so there was no room there, but then I saw the news that Gabriele wasn’t going to be signed and I saw there was an opportunity.

“My priority was to stay in the WTCC as I want to be at the top of touring cars and in the World Championship, but I had budget issues so I was looking at TCR as well as that championship is more affordable. I was talking to WestCoast Racing and Bamboo about securing a drive for 2016 in case I didn’t get anything in WTCC, and at the end of December it looked like it was going to be that way, but then Gabriele wasn’t signed at Honda, he went to Lada, I knocked on the door and everything ended up fine.”

Valente had his first experience of the Lada Vesta along with new team-mate Tarquini last week at the team’s operational base, run out of technical partner ORECA’s workshop at Magny-Cours, and he will be back in action at the French circuit again next week along with Tarquini and Catsburg.

“Gabriele did most of the driving as he has more experience in developing the car than I do. It was more of a software shakedown to try and improve the wheelspin at the starts as that was Lada’s main problem last year. The engine was great, but they got a lot of wheelspin under acceleration, so it was mostly just a lot of out and in-laps, so in one sense it was exciting but in another it was a little frustrating.

Valente is looking forward to having two competitive team-mates to benchmark himself against this year. Previously, within the privateer Chevrolet equipped teams, the teams don’t share data between themselves, meaning he’s had to work with his Campos team-mates data for the last two years, who have had limited experience themselves in the championship.

“Since I started in touring cars, I’ve never really had a team-mate to compare myself with,” said Valente. “Maybe I was performing well sometimes, but there’s always the possibility to do better.

“If last year I had the data of (Tom) Chilton I think sometimes we could have done better. (My team-mate) John (Filippi) was a rookie, and though he was performing great at the end of the year, for the most part of the season I was alone in terms of set-up and direction.

“So I’m very happy to work with Gabriele and Nicky…they’re both really fast, Gabriele has a crazy amount of experience and Nicky is one of the best GT drivers and was faster than Rob (Huff) last year in qualifying, so he’s on top of the game. It’s going to be great to see where I have to improve, where I’m faster and where they’re faster. I don’t feel pressure in that sense, more I see that it’s a gift in having two strong team-mates to help me improve as a driver.”