Jean-Karl Vernay hoping for maiden win ‘as early as tomorrow’

Jean-Karl Vernay scored the best result for Leopard Racing this season by finishing third in his Volkswagen Golf Gti TCR in qualifying at Estoril, Portugal. The Frenchman is happy with the improved performances of both cars in the team, with Stefano Comini finishing a close fourth in the session.

“We had a really good performance,” said Vernay. “We are not that far from pole. Of course the Balance of Performance [which gave the Golfs a 30-kg weight break] helped a bit. We know we have a lot of work to do to catch up with SEAT and Honda, our team needs to work to fight for pole position, but we have seen improvements, as also (team-mate) Stefano (Comini) was very close, so it is good for Leopard Racing.”

When asked how much of this performance was related to the decreased weight of the Golf, Vernay was honest: “Of course we gained two or three tenths with the weight break, everybody can see that. It’s good for the championship and to have different cars fighting for wins. Like I said, we still have a lot of work to do, and we discover new things every time we go out on track. We came here for testing but we had so many problems on the car we were not able to do any serious work. We are going to improve lap by lap during the season and we will be able to fight for pole position and score a few wins along the way, maybe as early as tomorrow.”

As for the reasons why the Golf is slower than the sister SEAT León TCR, Vernay admitted the German car suffers from more drag, but there is not much Leopard Racing can do to fix that: “We can’t do too much about that, it was designed like that by Volkswagen. We are 4 or 5 km/h slower than the SEATs on the straights, but we can’t do much about that. We can use a low-downforce configuration at the rear, but then you lose stability under braking and you lose big time in fast corners. We have to fight with what we have, I have a good team behind me and they are really smart, so we just have to work to find the best possible compromise in order to fight against the others.”

Vernay had a troubled weekend in Bahrain, including a contact with team-mate Comini, and the three points he collected today are the first he took this season.