Yann Ehrlacher: “We will fight in the race”

Geely Cyan Racing’s Yann Ehrlacher claimed the first pole position for the manufacturer in the TCR World Tour at Valencia

Ehrlacher led team-mates Thed Björk and Santiago Urrutia in the session and is ready to fight with then in Saturday’s Race 1.

“It was a good session,” Ehrlacher told TouringCarTimes. “We had a good practice yesterday already, so we felt the car was we had a good package in our end, so the team did a very good job, it was not easy for them.

“They had to work quite late to make sure everything was okay on the car after the weekend in Misano. You know when it’s a new car, you don’t know, you need to unbuild, rebuild everything just to make sure the reliability is there, and they did a proper job on that.”

The reigning TCR World Tour champion is still getting to know the Geely Prefact TCR, making its racing debut this season.

“In quali you just go and see step by step how it goes, if the cars pays, and how it goes with the temperature, temperature, first time with hope we saw little temperature on track, so it was quite different to yesterday.”

Ehrlacher also felt comfortable in the shorter, 3,136-metre, layout used for this year’s visit to the Ricardo Tormo circuit in Valencia, although it has its own challenges.

“To be honest, the other layout is just one corner to the right,” he said. “But I agree there is less, less, there is more corners per kilometre than on the other layout, so it’s more stressful for the tyres.

“But the layout is not bad for us to be honest, having this chicane is better than having a stop.

Ehrlacher and his team-mates Björk and Urrutia had a tight battle during the session and expects a tough fight down to Turn 1 at the start of the race.

“We will be fighting and we are very lucky that the team is giving us the first to fight,” he said.

“If we score points for the team, so even if a car loses some points, it’s still good.”