Honda drivers believe Citroën were sandbagging before qualifying

In qualifying, Yvan Muller pulled off a stunning improvement in Q3, taking pole position by going some eight tenths quicker than his previous best lap, with Muller stating it was a perfect lap, while his competitors believe the Citroën team weren’t showing their full hand throughout practice.

TouringCarTimes asked the Citroën driver how such a lap can be achieved in a high pressure situation: “It’s about hard work to be honest,” said Muller. “You have two sets (of tyres) for Q1 and then another for Q2, but if you make a mistake you can still go back to the pits and have one more chance. The engineer will then tell you to be faster here, there and so on, and at that point I tell him to shut up because it’s too much information and I focus on what I have to do.”

Even a multiple World Champion such as Muller admits it is not an automatic process, and it doesn’t go the best possible way every time: “It’s very complicated, you give it everything, it’s a do-or-die thing and you have to make it your best lap of the weekend. It’s very exciting, but very difficult. Sometimes we manage to do it, like we did today, and sometimes it just doesn’t come. I would say it’s partly down to the instinct of the driver and partly down to the advices from my engineer.”

TouringCarTimes also asked some of the other competitors what they thought about Muller’s performance.

Rival Honda Racing Team are convinced Citroën are able to deploy more power when needed during qualifying. Norbert Michelisz said to TouringCarTimes: “I think he (Yvan Muller) improved a couple of tenths with driving, then there has to be something else that justifies that improvement.”

The Hungarian’s team-mate Rob Huff was even blunt, saying they had done similar things when he was in the Chevrolet factory team: “I don’t think it’s the driver, I think it’s the car. Of course they have boost, they have power, they have everything. It’s the only way that it’s possible, and I know from many years at Chevrolet. It’s the same as last year, they improved as much as they wanted between Q1 and Q3. If it’s coming from the driver then he must be stupid, but then the drivers are not stupid because they are both World Champions, so it can only come from the car. It’s very simple.”

WTCC newcomer Thed Bjork admitted he watched Q3 with interest, trying to learn how to best handle the situation, but he has no idea how he would do in that situation and if it’s down to the driver, the car or a combination of both: “To be honest I don’t know, because I have no experience of Q3 at the moment. I don’t know how much I can gain if I get to Q3, because the second segment was already very close and that was interesting. I looked very carefully though, trying to see how the drivers treated their cars in Q3, I believed I learned a lot with that.”