Jean-Karl Vernay not giving up on title hopes despite Race 2 setback

An incident at Bus Stop forced Jean-Karl Vernay to retire from third in the second race of the weekend at Spa-Francorchamps. The Audi sustained damage to the driveshaft after a contact with Julien Briché’s Peugeot 308TCR.

“It was a good race,” said Vernay to TouringCarTimes. “I came quickly up to the top five and I was just waiting for a good opportunity, I was already happy with a podium place, but at the Bus Stop in the middle of the braking zone the pedal went completely to the floor and at that point I had no time to react, I just bumped into Julien (Briché) and broke the driveshaft. It was unfortunate and I talked to him to explain the situation, unfortunately I just had nowhere to go. It sucks because I was having a good race and I just scored no points, but unfortunately that’s racing.”

While admitting his 37-point deficit will not be easy to deal with, Vernay believes he can still fight for the championship despite scoring no points today.

“I’m still third in the championship, we’re a bit far from Azcona and he’s scoring points every weekend. If he continues like this it will be difficult to come back for us, but he could have some downs just like I did today. I’m happy with the team and the car, we are working well. I know In Hungary we will not be as competitive as we were this weekend, but then there will be Monza and Barcelona where we should be in a good shape, we surely have the potential to make up for the disadvantage.”

After some tyre issues in yesterday’s race, the Frenchman thinks he didn’t have a chance to appreciate the setup changes his WRT team made on his Audi RS 3 LMS.

“It’s hard to say, because the safety car gave the tyres a bit of a break. We are working on it, but to be honest the Peugeot was really quick and it would have been difficult to overtake him.”