Néstor Girolami satisfied with sixth for Polestar in Japan

Néstor Girolami followed up on his fast pace from free practice, where he led both sessions on new tyres, to qualify in sixth position for the main race on Sunday in Motegi, with the Argentinian just missing out on the top five shootout in the Cyan Racing Volvo S60.

Girolami’s time of 1:56.916 saw him miss the shootout by just over a tenth of a second after a late improvement from Sébastien Loeb Racing’s Tom Chilton.

“It was a great qualifying session for us,” said Girolami to TouringCarTimes. “In Free Practice 1 and Free Practice 2 we had better tyres than the other drivers, and this was the difference between free practice and qualifying.”

Girolami was one of a few drivers to opt for just one run in Q2, which proved to be Volvo’s downfall after Tom Chilton found more pace on his second run in the Citroën C-Elysée to go fifth fastest and knock Girolami to sixth, which equates to fifth on the grid for the reversed grid opening race.

“In the first part of qualifying, we did two outings, and in Qualifying 2 we did only one,” he explained. “Maybe if we had another go we could have improved, but the plan was always to do two in Q1 and one in Q2.”

Girolami starts fifth and sixth on Sunday, his best qualifying performance to-date on his third appearance in the WTCC and Motegi, and hopes to convert these into points for Volvo on race day.

“I will practice some starts tomorrow and hope to do some good races and get a lot of points for Volvo,” he said. “I need to know the race pace of the car; this is my challenge tomorrow.

“We (also) don’t know what the weather is tomorrow, but I have to do my best in all conditions, but I don’t know this car in wet conditions so it could be hard for me if it rained.”