Jean-Karl Vernay: “We couldn’t have hoped for a better weekend”

Team WRT’s Jean-Karl Vernay took his second win of the season at Zandvoort and launched to fourth in the drivers’ standings after a great weekend in The Netherlands, even whilst strategically skipping Race 2.

The Frenchman had a safe run in Race 1 to fourth position, before the team chose to change the engine overnight which earned them a back of the grid penalty for Race 2.

In qualifying, Vernay got to the top-five shootout for the first time and duly put the Audi RS 3 LMS on pole position for Race 3, his first pole in the World Touring Car Cup.

After a few exploratory in laps in Race 2, acknowledging it would not be possible to get into the top ten from 27th on the grid, Vernay led the way in Race 3 to take his second victory of the season, and his first non-reversed grid race win.

“I’m more proud of my lap in quali than my race result actually,” said Vernay to TouringCarTimes. “My pole lap was fantastic. The gap to the other guys was pretty big, and I wanted to show what we could have done on Sunday and also do it for the team as they worked hard.

“It was also important to win as now we’re fourth in the championship, and we couldn’t have hoped for a better weekend; except maybe a few more points in Race 2.”

There was a minor panic as Vernay’s start in Race 3 was flagged as under investigation but was eventually cleared.

“The team didn’t tell me the start was under investigation; in fact my start wasn’t even that good, Rob had a much better launch than me, and I my clutch was moving a little bit and I had to hold the handbrake pretty hard.”