Honda win Termas de Río Hondo MAC3 challenge

Honda Racing have won the Manufacturers’ Against the Clock (MAC3) challenge at Termas de Río Hondo, Argentina. The Japanese cars were not as fast as Citroën on the first lap, but the French cars lost time on their second lap and fell half a second behind, while Lada had a troubled MAC3 and finished far behind in third.

The Russian manufacturer was first to compete courtesy of reverse championship order, but Gabriele Tarquini was struggling right from the start. The Italian couldn’t keep up with his team-mates, and later reported further engine issues despite changing his power unit this morning.

As a result, Honda were easily able to beat Lada’s time when it was there turn. Norbert Michelisz led the group with Tiago Monteiro and Rob Huff behind him in the order. The Honda contingent ended up more than three seconds faster than Lada, and it was then up to Citroën to try and beat the Honda trio.

Despite a good start for the three Citroëns of José María López, Tom Chilton and Yvan Muller, building an advantage of over two tenths after the second sector, Tom Chilton appeared to struggle for rear-end grip further around the lap and ended up slowing down Yvan Muller. José María López began to pull away from his two marque-mates, and was much quicker than the two, while the time set by Yvan Muller as the third car on the road was 0.667 seconds slower than Honda’s 3:32.872.

This is the fifth MAC3 win this season for Honda, with Citroën having won three and Lada are yet to win any.