Esteban Guerrieri finds Macau deficit difficult to understand

World Touring Car Cup leader Esteban Guerrieri was at a loss to explain the significant gap to the frontrunners in Thursday’s practice sessions at Macau, in which he failed to break into the top 20.

Guerrieri heads to Macau – the penultimate round of the 2019 WTCR season – on top of the standings, currently leading BRC Hyundai’s Norbert Michelisz by six points.

The opening day of running at the renowned street venue did not bode well for the Argentinian or his team-mates, however, as Honda appeared to struggle for pace and languished well down the order.

Guerrieri was 23rd in the first practice session, 2.8s off the pace, and did only improve marginally to 22nd in FP2 – still 2.6s in arrears. With Münnich Motorsport team-mate Nestor Girolami ending the day even slower, the championship leader knows there is work to be done.

“It wasn’t the best of days,” Guerrieri told TouringCarTimes. “We definitely have a lot of things to analyse and improve. Set up-wise we are now talking [about] what to do and comparing stuff between us and KCMG, the other Honda cars. We can see a big deficit in the straight; I was taking Mandarin almost flat out and we are losing more than half a second to the quickest cars [on the straight]. It’s difficult to understand why, but that’s what we have right now.”

The fastest Honda driver of the day was KCMG’s Tiago Monteiro, who did manage to go P8 in the final practice session as he wound up just over a second off pace-setter Rob Huff. The Portuguese, racing in Macau for the first time since winning in 2016, offered some additional insight when quizzed by TouringCarTimes.

“It was a pretty good day in terms of balance and feel,” Monteiro said, before adding: “I am a little bit worried that even though I did a decent lap, I’m still a second away from the front, but obviously with the weight we have, it’s not going to be easy. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but we didn’t know how much of a gap it would make. Now we see it’s roughly 12 km/h on the straight.

“I also followed a few Volkswagens and Audis, and they have amazing exits off the corners. Again this is where the weight helps. We have to suffer with this and try our best, but Macau is a lottery – and you never know what happens. Here, you can not give an inch away. You have to do your best anyway and take all the risk possible to be as close as possible. Every lap has to count.”

While Honda is running 50 kilos of compensation weight in Macau, compared to ten for the Audis at the lowest end of the scale, Guerrieri however did not fully share Monteiro’s opinion that weight was the decisive factor.

“No, I don’t think so,” said Guerrieri. “We are on 50kg, Lynk & Co is on 60, and Hyundai is on 50, so we are pretty similar. It shouldn’t be a factor to influence our straightline speed I would say. It wasn’t my best performance on a few corners [in practice] and on the new-tyre run there was a red flag. Of course, you need confidence in Macau and a car that gives you that confidence, and try to drive smooth and precise. We just have to try to maximise the potential tomorrow, which is important.”