Jean-Karl Vernay gives seal of approval to TCR Australia

Ipswich Race One winner Jean-Karl Vernay has praised the TCR Australia series for a strong turnout in its first year as the World Touring Car Cup driver made his debut down under this weekend.

Drafted in as an Audi expert aboard the Audi RS 3 LMS for the Melbourne Performance Centre outfit, Vernay led the opening race of the round from pole and was never threatened in the race, going on to take victory on his first outing at Queensland Raceway.

Vernay said the number and quality of competitors in the TCR Australia series puts it up with the best TCR national series in the world, partly due to the sheer closeness of the field.

“For a first year (series) to have 18 cars is brilliant compared to other TCR series where there are 10 or 11 so congratulations to the championship,” he said post-race.

“From this morning you just have to look at the qualifying times to see it’s very close and there’s good racing, mainly guys coming from Supercars with some old champions (Russell Ingall).

“They are quick, we know that but I’m quite surprised about the gap between each brand; in our championship in WTCR it’s a weekend for us and then the next for Hyundai or Honda. The competition weight is moving quite a lot.

“To see here that Alfa Romeo, Honda and Hyundai in the same tenths is brilliant. It’s good and I’d be happy to come back, it’s nice to discover a new race track, a new country and a new experience for learning.”

Vernay said his lights-to-flag victory was essentially won in the first laps when he then put on a gap to the chasing field, being conscious not to run off the racing line and onto the marbles from there on.

“The first two laps were pretty difficult because the tyre pressures were too low and it was sliding quite a lot, at Turn 4 I had a problem there,” Vernay said.

“The first lap was the most difficult but after I put a gap on after the restart and was just focused on putting on the same tenths of a second all race to make it fun. It was good, the car was very consistent, I really enjoyed it.

“With the track, at first I didn’t think it was the most exciting track in Australia but it’s still very interesting with lots of dust; you need to keep focused on the dirt outside the racing line and not go on to it or you can make easy mistakes.”

Vernay will have the chance to notch up more wins tomorrow as he starts from pole thanks to the progressive grid in Sunday’s two races. Race 2 starts at 1:15pm local time and will have a half hour break after its conclusion with Race Three rounding out the weekend at 2:20pm.