Yann Ehrlacher: “The start was the key to the race”

Geely Cyan Racing driver Yann Ehrlacher claimed the victory in Sunday’s opening TCR World Tour at Vila Real after taking the lead at the start of the race.

The Frenchman had qualified in second place on the grid behind Hyundai’s Mikel Azcona, but was able to overtake the Spaniard at the green lights.

“For sure, you know, like the run out of the grid is like a little bit kicked,” Ehrlacher told TouringCarTimes. “My jump was very good and I could see to compensate that he (Azcona) went a bit aggressive on the throttle, so he picked up a bit of spin and then I felt I could have a go, so I didn’t panic.

“I really managed my launch to make sure I didn’t want to be too eager, and yeah, it was actually perfectly executed.

“We knew it was like the key point of the race, was like all the start, all the joker lap, and the joker is tough because when you run in the dirty air from someone, very difficult to keep up the pace. So fair play to him because it was in my air the whole race.”

The race suffered two safety car neutralisations, which penalised Ehrlacher in his joker lap strategy.

“We were a bit unfortunate in the race with this safety car, because after my first joker, I was within the window to joker again, and I would have been cleared of the jokers,” he said.

“So we made the race a bit more interesting, but definitely it’s very nice for the show, but it’s very tough for us because, with the tire drop, we basically need to put quality laps every lap, which on normal condition it would have been more of an easy race.

“You just manage your tire, you make sure to not get punctures, you make sure with the kerbs, you make sure of everything, but here you could not make sure of anything,” the Geely driver added. “You just had to go flat out like every lap, so it was tough.”

The Frenchman also set the fastest lap of the race, gaining a position for Race 2’s reverse grid.

“For Race 2, I gain one position because of this fastest lap in the race one, so we start from eighth, so we will try to optimize strategy with the jokers and try to recover maybe into the top five,” Ehrlacher concluded.