Gianni Morbidelli takes championship lead with win and podium

Gianni Morbidelli took the championship lead after a great weekend at Estoril, Portugal. The Italian won the first race and charged to third in the second heat, thus bagging 40 points on race day, which brought him into the lead of the championship.

“I did everything I could, and I think it was a good race,” said the WestCoast Racing driver. “I lost quite a lot of time behind (Pepe) Oriola, which opened a big gap between me and (Craft-Bamboo Lukoil’s Sergey) Afanasyev. I did a very good lap after that, but I probably pushed too hard and I immediately felt the front tyres had gone. I made a mistake there, but once you are in that situation you need to try, of course.”

At that point the Honda driver did not believe he could finish the race on the podium: “I saw the SEAT was far, and I didn’t think I could finish third. It was a difficult race, very tough, and when you are behind other cars you suffer more with understeer and brakes. I must say that I gave it everything I had, so I can be happy and proud of the work the team and I have done, it was a very good day for me.”

Speaking of his championship lead, the Italian doesn’t look at the standings too much, as it’s still very early in the season: “That (the championship lead) doesn’t mean a lot, it’s just the beginning of the season, we have a lot more to do. Last year I also led the championship but I didn’t win it, so I don’t want to think about the lead. We need to go ahead step-by-step, race-by-race, and we need to do the best we can every time we go out on track.”

With Morbidelli now on maximum ballast for Spa-Francorchamps, the Italian is more concerned about straight line speed, an area in which the SEAT León TCR is better than the Honda Civic TCR according to the new championship leader: “First of all when you have maximum ballast it means you did a very good job the weekend before, so I would like to keep that extra weight for a long time. It means my performance today was good and I know that it will be more difficult for us, the car suffers a lot with tyres and brakes, but I need to try. I am more worried because Spa is a very fast track, and we are not as quick as the SEATs on straights, so we will struggle on the long straights in Belgium.”

Morbidelli leads by a single point over Craft-Bamboo Lukoil’s James Nash, who will carry 10 kilos of ballast, while defending Champion Stefano Comini will have 20 kilos of extra weight in Belgium