Photo: WTCR

Frédéric Vervisch at a loss to explain brake issues which hampered his weekend

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Comtoyou Racing’s Frédéric Vervisch had a weekend to forget in the World Touring Car Cup in Morocco, with the Belgian becoming the first retirement of the championship in Race 1 on Saturday, and with brake issues seeing him record another two DNFs on Sunday.

The 31-year-old ran into the rear of James Thompson’s Münnich Honda Civic at the start of Race 1 and retired with damaged suspension, collecting a five-place grid penalty as a result for Race 2.

The Audi driver made it into Q2 on Sunday, but stopped with brake problems in the first race, before a total brake failure in Race 3 saw him slam into the rear of Pepe Oriola’s Cupra TCR at Turn 7.

“Saturday was not good with the incident at the start; but then on Sunday things started much better,” he told TouringCarTimes.

“We changed quite a lot and we were really going in the right direction and were much closer to the WRT cars, but then in the two races I had no brakes. We really don’t know what’s wrong, but two times when I tried to slow I had nothing; I tried to slow it with the handbrake, so we have a big issue there.”

His Comtoyou Racing team-mate Denis Dupont had an even tougher start on Sunday, crashing out at Turn 1 also with a braking issue, with his car unable to be repaired for the afternoon’s races.

“I think we have kind of the same issue as it’s not just struggling with the braking, we had no brakes at all. We did what we needed to do and pump the pedal, but there’s been a failure somewhere and we need to investigate, as it’s a big safety issue.”

On the change from racing in the TCR International Series, where Vervisch was a pole winner at Monza last year, to the WTCR, Vervisch is enjoying the change but admits there’s more work to do for the team to get up front.

“There’s respect between the drivers which is good, they’re quite strict on the driving standards which is better than TCR. Now it’s up for us to gain a bit of performance, there are still so many races left, but this was not the best start.”