Yann Ehrlacher: “It was the only overtaking possible”

Yann Ehrlacher won the first FIA TCR World Tour race of the weekend at the Ricardo Tormo circuit in Valencia after a controversial pass of team-mate and pole sitter Santiago Urrutia at the start.

“The race was ok, I had a good start. It was one of the only possible overtaking opportunity available,” Ehrlacher told TouringCarTimes.

Ehrlacher made the faster start from second place and had to take onto the grass to pass a defensive Urrutia, with the two banging wheels in the process.

“When you are racing a team-mate you have to be more careful and we went quite smooth and we did the job at the start and pass into P1,” said Ehrlacher.

“We are allowed to race each other, but not to compromise our team-mates.”

Urrutia avoided commenting the incident after the race and said he almost stalled as the lights went out.

“I didn’t start well, it was difficult for me to try not to stall the car,” said Urrutia.

“The race was good and clean, and we scored good points, now I’m the championship leader.”

Ma had a front-row seat for the battle in front of him and the Chinese driver got past Urrutia for second place later in the race, only for his team-mate to regain the place a lap later.

“I tried to fight a little bit, but I think it’s not good between team-mates to create chaos,” said Ma.

“I raced on the safe side because the team points are too important and we are focusing a lot on the team.”

Ehrlacher ultimately led home a 1-2-3 for Lynk & Co Cyan Racing and asked for their secret at this circuit, the Frenchman said: “In the winter we come here to do testing quite often, it’s our base here, so we know it quite well and we’ve done a lot of work from last year to this year, which is paying now, and that’s good to see.”