Esteban Guerrieri had more pace than team-mate Norbert Michelisz

Esteban Guerrieri finished the main race at Macau in fourth, after a last-lap mistake caused him to lose the third place he had held for most of the race. The Honda driver was immediately aggressive on Volvo’s Thed Björk, as he wanted to take points away from team-mate Norbert Michelisz’s title rival, after which he took a cautious approach.

I was keen on fighting him and take some points away from Björk,” said the Argentinian to TouringCarTimes. “I suppose I wanted to play it safe and I overtook him quite soon. The race was very difficult, there were a lot of places where you could crash, so I just took it easy and built the speed step by step. After a couple of laps I pushed more and I closed the gap to Norbi (Michelisz) and Tom (Chilton), and as soon as I got there my team-mate got a bad exit out of the last corner, which blocked Chilton and I overtook him.”

Once he was ahead of Chilton, the Argentinian enquired of the team if he could go for the win, but Honda understandably replied he should stay behind Michelisz. “I asked the team if I could overtake Norbi and try to go for the win, but they said I had to stay behind him, so I started to play it safe and defend from Chilton. It wasn’t easy, because Norbi was taking it very easy and I was trying to not bother him.”

Guerrieri went on to explain how he made the mistake that cost him a podium spot at the last lap.

“It was my mistake in the last lap, but it’s not a big problem because Norbi got many points and my mistake didn’t hurt the team in the Constructors’ championship. I got a white and black flag and we thought it was because I was too slow at Melco. I believed they thought I wanted to block Chilton, but all I was doing was staying away from Norbi. It turned out I was warned for my behaviour out of Lisboa, which I don’t think was unfair, I was just closing the door not to lose position. After that I tried to push up to Melco, so that the stewards wouldn’t think I was doing something unfair, and I just made a mistake at Dona Maria and Chilton just went through.”