Photo: TCR Media

Jean-Karl Vernay critical of Dusan Borkovic after Race 2 contact

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Jean-Karl Vernay was again critical of B3 Racing’s Dusan Borkovic, after a contact with the Serbian put the Leopard Racing driver out of the race. The Frenchman believes Borkovic’s behaviour on track is not acceptable.

“In Race 2 I let him past and he still hit me and I hit the wall,” said Vernay to TouringCarTimes. “This is not acceptable. I’m sorry for Leopard Racing, because we are working here and they put a lot of money into this, we can’t lose races like that.”

Although Vernay stresses he has nothing personal against Borkovic, he believes the SEAT driver ruined his race: “I have nothing against him, but he is involved in something, every race. I’m just disappointed, we wanted to be careful in Race 1 and then go for it in the second heat with new tyres, but it didn’t work. It’s not good for the series either, we want a quality championship with great teams and drivers. There are many good drivers in TCR already, but when you can have a DNF due to something you can’t even imagine will happen, it’s very disappointing.”

The situation is such that, according to Vernay, he expects anything can happen when the Serbian is close to him: “You never know what he is going to do, you see Borkovic and you have to get out of the way, it’s not okay. It can’t continue like this, we must not get too far. We already lost quite a bit of points.”

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The B3 Racing driver, who claimed pole position yesterday and finished second in both races, thinks the contact was always going to happen as Vernay tried to stay too close to his SEAT when he overtook the Frenchman: “I passed him under braking very cleanly, it was normal racing,” said Borkovic to TouringCarTimes. “I was on the inside, he tried to resist instead of lining up behind me and it was always going to happen, but it was a racing incident. When you lose a place it’s always tough, I know that, but I don’t think what he says is true.”

Borkovic believes Vernay should not have tried to resist in such a rigid way and should have lined up behind him: “When someone overtakes me under braking I try to get back to the normal line after he is through, not while he is alongside me. I know that with any driver he will surely touch you. Everybody knows physics, I was inside, I didn’t touch him on purpose, I was always going to touch him.”

After two incidents between the two, Borkovic does not understand why the Frenchman complains about his driving style: “He hit me in Imola and in Bahrain, but he didn’t do it for the sake of racing, he hit me in a bad way. I don’t understand why he is complaining. It hasn’t happened just with me, he also touched with other drivers in the past. When we made contact in Imola it was very risky. I overtook a lot of people, maybe I am aggressive, but I don’t hit people just to bang them out of my way, I just overtake like any other driver. There is a big difference between the two.”

Dusan Borkovic collected 36 points in Germany, more than doubling his score so far, which was 25 prior to Oschersleben. He will carry maximum ballast in Sochi, with team-mate Mat’o Homola on 20 kg and James Nash keeping his 10-kg ballast.