James Nash proud of ‘smart tyre strategy’

James Nash drove faultlessly in the second race at Estoril, Portugal, to claim his first TCR International Series win. The Craft-Bamboo Lukoil driver praised the team’s decision not to run in free practice in order to have four new tyres in the races, which paid off for the Brit.

“I knew it was going to be difficult, and I made the worst start of the season,” admitted Nash. “I had (Stefano) Comini side by side with me, but luckily he missed the braking point and started fighting with his team-mate (Jean-Karl) Vernay, so it allowed me to build a bit of a gap.”

The Brit went on to explain how the tyre strategy worked out for him: “Not running in free practice was a tough choice to make, but we wanted to have four new tyres for both races. It made qualifying difficult, but it obviously came to life in Race 2, when we were starting at the front. It was all about making the new tyres work early on and stick to the extra weight after that, I really struggled at the end and I was getting a countdown of half a second each lap as Comini was closing in, so it was a gap, but a stressful one, especially when it was coming down!”

The choice of pushing straight from the beginning to build a strong gap was also correct: “It was always going to be that way, I had to push at the beginning because I knew he (Comini) would come back towards the end. It’s always very difficult to manage the weight, stopping the car, locking the front are big problems. I had to open the best gap I could and then see how he would come back in the end.”

His maiden win in the series is a monkey off Nash’s back, who is happy he got it ‘out of the way’: “I didn’t really know how it was going to go in Bahrain after two years away from touring cars. The good start gave me confidence, and after that it was nice to have this first win out of the way.”

The Craft-Bamboo Lukoil driver finished every race in the points so far, which is a precise strategy as he is looking after his championship chances: “You need consistency to win championships, it’s not always about who wins the most races, you need to finish every time and score points. You have to be smart as well and maximise your opportunities, you need to make smart decisions. Qualifying was really hard after I did no running in free practice, but it gave us the best opportunity and we worked on the reversed grid. We are a smart team and we work hard with SEAT to make sure we take those opportunities, and I will do the same in Spa. We will need to see where we are and what the car is like and work from there.”

Nash in second in the championship, just a single points behind WestCoast Racing’s Gianni Morbidelli and 14 ahead of team-mate Pepe Oriola.