Mehdi Bennani hails Wuhan win as his toughest yet

Mehdi Bennani has said his first World Touring Car Cup victory in Race 2 at Wuhan has been the toughest of his career, after the Moroccan managed to fend off the faster Peugeot 308TCR of Aurélien Comte to the finish.

Comte managed to get ahead of Bennani at Turn 10 on the final lap after he’d been pressuring the Moroccan for half the race, before the Frenchman made a mistake at the Turn 12 hairpin and went wide, ceding the place back to the Sébastien Loeb Racing Volkswagen driver.

“If I have to choose which victory was the hardest one then I have to choose this one, because it was very tough from the beginning of the event,” said Bennani.

“I had to drive at 110% per cent to keep the gap because I know that after 12-13 laps I will be struggling with the tyres. So I tried to play a lot to move the brakes to the back and it was working well. It was good and this one is a nice victory and I missed it a lot. Since the crash in Portugal a lot of things have happened in my mind, but I have my family around me and I have confidence for this. This victory is for the King of Moroccco because the only way I am racing is that he pushed me as a professional driver.

On the incident with Comte, Bennani reflected:

“I knew he had a much lighter car than me…he closed a little bit too much in the last three laps and the only way I have to defend is to keep pushing, but I know if I give him the straight line he will overtake me underbraking. When he overtook me, I already knew he would brake later on his line. It’s nearly impossible to brake the car and stop it. So I managed to do it well and overtake him on the last corner, and I’m happy for the victory, I deserved it a lot and didn’t deserve to lose it at the last corner.”