Stefano Comini unhappy with officials’ call to start wet races behind safety car

Leopard Racing’s Stefano Comini has voiced his displeasure at the race organisers’ decision to start the races behind the safety car, should wet conditions return to the Salzburgring circuit on Sunday.

The reigning champion qualified down in 13th position following a gearbox change just ahead of qualifying, which wasn’t completed until after the rain began to fall in Q1, robbing the Swiss driver of any opportunity to make the top 12 and make it through into Q2.

“They want to start with the safety car if it’s raining, and this is gay style,” said Comini to TouringCarTimes. “I didn’t agree yesterday in the briefing, and now I’m even more disappointed in this, as a standing start would be better for the show and I’m better at the starts, and now I can’t win three or four positions at the start.”

Comini thanked his team for giving him the opportunity to take part in qualifying which at least allowed him to jump ahead of three cars, after discovering a problem which had kept his Volkswagen Golf near the back of the order during practice.

“We wanted to change the gearbox as we had a lot of problems and I was losing a lot of time when changing from fifth to six, and from fourth to fifth,” he added. “We wanted to do it before qualifying to have a better possibility to be at the front and get to Q2, as if you look at my free practice every time our results were shit.”

“I know this circuit a lot, I don’t like it, but I know that I am fast here. We missed five or ten minutes from Q1, and when we were ready, the main corner was too wet. I tried my best, but I couldn’t go any faster and I didn’t want to crash the car as I had slicks on the front and wets on the rear. I want to thank my mechanics who did the maximum to get me to start in Q1.”