Dusan Borkovic and James Nash on opposite tyre strategies

The shortage of new tyres caused by a delay in the delivery from Bahrain triggered different tyre strategies up and down the pit lane.

James Nash confirmed he elected not to go out in free practice – except for an installation lap – in order to preserve his tyres: “The plan is to have new tyres for the sessions that matter,” said the Craft-Bamboo Lukoil driver to TouringCarTimes. “Hopefully it will prove to be a smart move. If qualifying goes well then we were right, if not then we made the wrong call.”

Nash is targeting a top-six finish in Q2: “It would be very nice if I could finish in the top six. Making it to Q2 should be the easy part, but with the weight and the tyre situation I would be happy to be up there.”

Testing on Wednesday should have given the team enough data to start with a good setup in qualifying: “Of course having tested here helps. Hopefully it will be enough to have a good setup and have a quick car this afternoon.”

Dusan Borkovic elected to do runs in practice instead, actually setting the pace during this morning’s session in his B3 Racing SEAT: “It’s the same for everyone, so there was no need to do anything different,” said the SEAT driver to TouringCarTimes. “It’s no big deal really, it’s actually good because we know everyone was on new tyres and we were quick, so I hope it stays like that afterwards [in qualifying].”

The Serbian has a 10kg ballast on his León TCR: “We have some weight, so if we can pull off a good result in qualifying it’s great. I know I had good race pace in Bahrain, so it should be good this weekend as well. Testing on Wednesday also helped, I am learning the car with the Michelin tyres.”

Qualifying is scheduled for 16.40 local time.