Norbert Michelisz: “I couldn’t risk losing positions with the joker”

Norbert Michelisz achieved victory in Sunday’s second TCR World Tour Race at Vila Real after a complicated weekend marred by technical issues, taking an early joker lap to prevent getting stuck in the pack.

“My race weekend wasn’t easy, the car felt good from the first moment in free practice, but we had some trouble, technical trouble, which made qualifying very tricky,” Michelisz said.

“We had to replace the driveshaft in Q1, which the team did in just four minutes so, in the end, I was happy to do even more very slow lap in Q2.

“We did our best to avoid any kind of technical problem in the race,” the Hungarian continued, “Huge thanks to the team because the mechanics did magic yesterday and the only reason I’m here talking to you today is just because of them.”

Michelisz performed his joker lap at the end of the fifth lap, which was something of a strategic move for the Hungarian.

“I did my best to build a gap, pushing the front tyres a lot, just to build a gap, to be able to do the joker lap,” he said.

“This was the worst timing because I used a lot from the tyres, I built a gap and I did the joker, but then the safety car came in, so everyone close the gap, so I think they had just better tyres than me at that point.”

The Vila Real results allow Michelisz to sit in third place in the championship, just 34 points behind Geely driver Santiago Urrutia.

“I just would like to keep the momentum,” Michelisz told TouringCarTimes. “I’m very happy that we improved our form compared to last year and also very happy with Mikel performing so well.

“And I think the most important thing is just to keep these momentum score points consistently, because, yeah, it’s still a long season, because we will have three races three times, three times in China, one time in Korea, so 14 races left,” he explained.

“So we are from the venues, we are at half point, but from the number of races we are not, so it’s still a very long race to go.”