James Thompson caught out by rising temperatures

James Thompson was classified 15th on his FIA World Touring Car Championship comeback, which became 14th after Fredrik Ekblom was sent to the back of the grid due to a missed weight check.

The Brit drove his Muennich Motorsport Chevrolet RML Cruze TC1 for the first time yesterday in testing, but was expecting a better result after a strong showing in Free Practice 2.

“To be honest, I thought I could have done more than 15th,” admitted the double British Touring Car Champion to TouringCarTimes. “I didn’t expect to be in the top twelve, but at least I would have liked to be closer.”

Several issues prevented James Thompson from performing better: “I was having a good lap when the red flag came out. I obviously wasted a set of new tyres, so for the following run I could only fit two new tyres instead of four. I then made a mistake at the hairpin which cost me a lot, so I surely missed the chance to do better.”

When asked to explain why his pace dropped so much between FP2 and qualifying, the Brit said it was a series of combined factors: “Of course I had all those small issues, plus I had never seen the car before. We are treating it as a test race, so we are taking what we can and I enjoy driving. I think the temperatures went higher, and at that point understeer became a big issue. We obviously learned something and it is positive, I will keep smiling and try to make the best we can out of this race.”