Esteban Guerrieri admits team is “scratching heads”

Championship contender Esteban Guerrieri has admitted his surprise at the pace of Münnich Motorsport’s rivals at the WTCR finale in Spain, after struggling badly on the opening day of running.

The Honda Civic Type R TCR cars all languished well down the order throughout Saturday’s activities, with Guerrieri left down in 18th in qualifying while title rival Yann Ehrlacher of Lynk & Co took P2.

Néstor Girolami was the only Honda runner to even advance into Q2, where he eventually lapped slowest of the 12 drivers to progress – 1.7 seconds off the pace.

Guerrieri accepted that a loss of track time in final practice – where his team changed the braking system in-session – had done little to help matters, but said it could not explain the full extent of the huge gap to the leading pack.

“The day didn’t start particularly well, as we decided to make some changes to the braking set-up,” said Guerrieri. “We knew we would lose the second practice session as a result, but we thought it was the best thing for our race weekend so we went ahead with it.

“In qualifying, I probably didn’t maximise my potential and made some small errors in a couple of corners. But in the end our potential is what Néstor was able to show, and that’s far away from what we expected, to be honest.

“It’s a little bit concerning to be 1.7 seconds away from our direct rivals in the championship, so we’re scratching our heads a bit. But that result is done, so let’s try to fight tomorrow with the weapons we have and see what we can do.”

Girolami, meanwhile, said his Q2 lap had been relatively solid and agreed with his countryman that there was little more to extract.

“My Q2 lap was clean,” he said. “I could perhaps have improved by a couple of tenths in the last sector, but the gap to the cars ahead was bigger than this. We did our best, but unfortunately it was not enough for a great result today.”

Guerrieri will move into race day at the Aragón showdown 31 points down on Ehrlacher.