Mikel Azcona surprised with time trial tyre issue

Mikel Azcona has been very fast all through the inaugural PURE ETCR weekend at Vallelunga. The Spaniard spun out of the turn 6-7-8 complex as his left rear tyre lost pressure, which basically turned him into a passenger as he lost control of his Cupra E-Racer.

“I was very surprised, I didn’t expect this problem”, admitted the Cupra driver to TouringCarTimes.

“From what we saw in the video we had a rear left puncture, which is why I lost control as soon as I turned in, so the priority was to save the car and avoid hitting the wall for Mattias (Ekström). It’s a shame because we were fastest all weekend, I won yesterday against Augusto Farfus, so I was very comfortable and I expected pole for the DHL SuperFinal.”

Azcona was quick to point out that such a problem had never happened during the extensive testing programme conducted by the manufacturer: “We have to investigate what happened to the tyre, because we never had this issue despite having done a lot of testing with 500 KW of power, it might have been a tyre defect.”

Azcona will start from the back of the six-car grid in the DHL SuperFinal, and after the problem his focus has switched to finishing the race: “We’ve never raced with six cars, I just want to finish the race and take it easy. Obviously I will try my best but at the same time I have to save the car, I have good drivers ahead of me so I don’t expect it to have it easy.”

The Spaniard admits that having to hand over his car to his team-mate Mattias Ekström forces him to change his approach to the races: “The team always tells us to save the car for the team-mate as well, so it’s different than normal because you can’t push 100%, so it’s a little bit strange. Of course you feel the responsibility of not crashing the car, so the other driver can race.”

Being a high-profile figure in TCR, the Cupra driver admits the feeling of driving an electric car with rear-wheel drive and a lot of power is a different beast compared to the 340hp internal combustion engined touring cars:

“It is very different from TCR, I never drove this kind of cars with a lot of power and a lot of weight, all at the rear. For me it was a little bit difficult to adapt to this car, also due to the type of tyre we use, as it is grooved, so it changes the behaviour of the car quite a lot. I think we did a good job to adapt in the end, but it’s very different and I would say more difficult to drive.”