First lap attack crucial to securing P2 says Néstor Girolami

PSS Racing’s Néstor Girolami says that an aggressive opening lap of the second TCR Europe series race at Paul Ricard was the key to finishing second.

The Argentinian, who was deputising for the team’s regular driver Viktor Davidovski who was unable to travel to France due to COVID-19 related travel restrictions, finished just under two seconds adrift of winner Mike Halder despite starting seventh on the grid.

“I’m really happy with the result,” said Girolami.

“Yesterday we had a lack of top speed because of the hot temperatures so today we decided to attack on the very first lap, from P7 to P4 pretty much immediately.

“Then I went for P3 and I thought maybe I could go for P2 but then Taoufik in the Audi had to serve a penalty, so I got P2 for free!

Girolami was keen to avoid a drop-off in tyre performance which affected his Honda Civic Type-R TCR during Saturday’s opening race.

And while the tyres did drop off in the closing stages, Girolami felt his first lap charge, and subsequent drive through penalty for Taoufik for a jump-start – had been vindicated at the end.

“I’d put a lot of stress on the front tyres at the beginning to overtake people, so at the end my pace wasn’t perfect,” he said.

“But I want to congratulate Mike as he did an amazing job, he didn’t make any mistakes but from our side we recovered the speed that we showed on Friday, so that’s good.”