Esteban Guerrieri at a loss to explain qualifying contact

Münnich Motorsport’s Esteban Guerrieri had a mixed day in qualifying, putting his Honda Civic TCR third on the grid for Race 1 tomorrow at Suzuka, while an incident with YMR Hyundai driver Yvan Muller in the second session saw them both miss the top ten, and Guerrieri branding the Frenchman “not mature” for refusing to discuss it.

The Argentinian qualified in third position for Race 1, the closest challenger to the pace-setting Alfa Romeo and Peugeot of Kevin Ceccon and Aurélien Comte, just ahead of team-mate Yann Ehrlacher, but as he overtook the YMR Hyundai i30 N TCR of Yvan Muller on the outlap at the start of Q2, the two made contact, with Guerrieri damaging his rear and Muller needing new tyres.

Muller was unable to set a competitive time, while Guerrieri lapped the circuit to the same thousandth as Campos Racing’s Pepe Oriola, which means he’ll have to start 11th for both of Sunday’s races.

“I could probably have gone a bit quicker in the first qualifying, but I didn’t put it all together, but third was good for us,” said Guerrieri to TouringCarTimes.

“But then in the other qualifying, in Q2 we had contact with Yvan. I’ve just asked him what he thinks about it but he didn’t want to talk to me. Basically it’s unfortunate, as I thought he was more mature, but apparently that’s not the case. I was overtaking him as he was letting some cars by, and we just made contact. I broke my rear toe-link so we had to change that, and I had to push too hard on my outlap and burned my tyres, and just crossed the line with one second left, and then I only missed the top ten by one-thousandth.”