Norbert Michelisz concerned about lack of pace after first day
BRC Racing Team’s Norbert Michelisz has said he’s concerned about the pace of the Hyundai i30 N TCR compared to the rivals after the first official day of testing in Spain, declaring the cars have a significant speed disadvantage to their rivals.
The Hungarian, who will miss the second day of track action tomorrow due to family commitments, was 15th fastest in the combined test times for the day, 2.5 seconds off the pace of Honda driver Esteban Guerrieri.
“It’s a bit of a tricky day for us, as performance-wise we’re a bit behind where we expected, so I’m curious to see why this is, but I’m also curious to see what Gabriele can do tomorrow,” said Michelisz.
“We’re struggling much more than at the end of last season. I don’t know what the reason for this is, but I’m sure the team is good enough to find out what this is before Marrakech. I think one reason is that the opposition is much stronger than last year, and I don’t know if the latest changes in BoP have had an effect.”
The time differences varied significantly between the drivers, indicating few drivers were putting together perfect lap times despite the near-ideal conditions at the circuit, but Michelisz was insistent the Hyundais were not playing games during the test.
“Normally you know more-or-less where you’re at with all the pre-season testing we’ve done, and I’m less confident than I was at the same point last season.
“The biggest deficit we have is on the straight line. We have a deficit to every car on the track, and we are not playing around, lifting half-way on the straight just to have a bad speed trap – we’ve checked the data and we have a deficit of 10kph to some cars.”
