Norbert Michelisz not getting carried away by good testing performance

Norbert Michelisz came second in today’s testing, two tenths shy of pace setter Gabriele Tarquini. Despite the good performance, the Hungarian says there is a lot of work to do in order to get the best possible results out of the Slovakiaring weekend.

“It was okay, but it’s always difficult to predict how the others are doing on Friday,” said the Honda Racing driver. “For me Lada was a bit stronger than I expected, and looking at the split times I think they will be really strong this weekend. I have to say I was struggling a bit more than expected. If you compare my lap times with Rob (Huff)’s and Tiago (Monteiro)’s I am in a good position, but I know that they were on different programs and had some troubles.”

The Hungarian is still upbeat, as the team will try several different solutions tomorrow: “I had a clean lap but the time was weaker than I expected. We have many ideas for tomorrow, so we still have a lot of opportunities for tomorrow and the rest of the weekend, but we need to work really hard to maintain the momentum from Paul Ricard.”

Due to the unpredictability of the outcome of the weekend, Michelisz set no goals for himself: “Not really, first we need to see where we are compared to the others. On paper we should be able to fight for pole position, but it’s difficult to predict anything because the weather can change or the opponents may find something more than we expect. I still think we should be able to be in the top three with at least one car and then fight for the win.”

Talking about MAC3, the Hungarian says there is no possibility to work a strategy out, and says the problem Huff had in France, where the driver stalled at the start, is now solved: “The best strategy is not having a strategy. It’s impossible to predict the running order coming to the first corner, I think the key is to know your team-mates and do a perfect team work in order to lose as little time as possible at the first corner.

“Of course we have to do equal standing starts, because if we have a problem like we saw in Paul Ricard it affects the performance of the whole team, but I believe the problem is sorted. For me MAC3 is really decided on the first corner, if we don’t have any issues there we can expect to mount a serious challenge to win the competition.”

Norbert Michelisz sits fourth in the championship, eight points shy of the lead.