Esteban Guerrieri accepts seventh as the best result for Honda on Saturday

Münnich Motorsport’s Esteban Guerrieri was relatively content with seventh on his TCR-debut with the new Honda Civic TCR, but blames contact from Sébastien Loeb Racing’s Mehdi Bennani as the reason he was unable to finish further up the order, instead crossing the line just ahead of team-mate Yann Ehrlacher at the finish.

Guerrieri started from sixth on the grid, but was pushed aside by Bennani into Turn 1, with the Moroccan explaining he felt that the Argentinian had braked too early into the corner and caught him out by surprise. Guerrieri slipped down the order, but was able to continue on to finish seventh, crossing the line just ahead of Ehrlacher.

“It’s a decent start and it’s better to have points than not,” said Guerrieri. “From P6 on the grid, I was optimistic of making up ground at the start, but I was hit from behind by Mehdi Bennani, went wide and lost some positions at Turn 1. The damage I sustained meant that the balance was never quite right for the rest of the race and I was down on power too, so I’m pretty pleased to hold on to P7 ahead of Yann.”

Team principal Dominik Greiner was happy with the team’s progress, despite two of his cars being involved in contact, with James Thompson being spun out at the start by the Comtoyou Racing Audi of Frédéric Vervisch, and was only able to recover to finish 14th.

“All three cars finished what was a very tough race on drivers and machinery and I have to say thank you to the team for their hard work to make sure that happened,” he said. “Quite a few members of our team are working with us in World Touring Cars for the first time, so this has been a big challenge for them, but they’ve risen to the occasion and done a tremendous job.”