Honda claimed front-row starting position and victory in MAC3 despite a challenging qualifying day for the FIA World Touring Car Championship’s Race of China at the Shanghai International Circuit.
Norbert Michelisz, who claimed his maiden victory as a factory driver in Japan earlier this month, progressed into the second ‘Q2’ section of qualifying with relative ease and, despite suffering with 60kg of compensation weight, put his Civic WTCC ninth on the grid for the Main Race.
This means he will start the partially reversed-grid opening race from second place, giving the Hungarian a great opportunity to add to his seven podium finishes so far in 2016.
His factory team-mates Tiago Monteiro and Rob Huff, who also carried 60kg of compensation weight, were less fortunate.
Both were pushed outside the Q2 places late in Q1, during the dying moments of the 20-minute session and errors from both prevented them from making the top 12.
Tiago, who arrived in China second in the WTCC points, will start each race from 14th while Rob will be one place further back.
After qualifying, the tenth MAC3 shoot-out of the season was held with Honda claiming a record sixth victory of the year thanks to a superb display of teamwork by Rob, Tiago and Norbert.
Norbert Michelisz, Honda Racing Team JAS, said: “I’m very pleased to be starting from the front row in the opening race because it does give me the opportunity to score a strong result and my target is to win, as I did in Japan. I’m also pleased to be a part of another MAC3 victory, which showed some really good teamwork between Rob, Tiago and myself. But I am concerned about the gap to the fastest cars in qualifying, and especially about the straightline speed compared to some of the others. It was obvious from practice that we had some improvements to make and while I think we have done some good things with the car today, we’re not where we want to be. We’ll work extremely hard tonight to understand ways in which we can boost the performance for race day.”
Tiago Monteiro, Castrol Honda World Touring Car Team, said: “While it’s great to win MAC3, today has been frustrating because of the performance in qualifying. We knew today would be difficult, because the long straights here penalise our car and we can’t take advantage of the handling and balance as well as on other circuits. Plus, with so many cars having 0kg of compensation weight this weekend, their performance relative to ours has taken a step up. I had to push hard to make up the difference and ultimately made a mistake on my last lap, lost 0.2 seconds and missed Q2. From P14 both races will be tough, but if I can start well and score some points then the fight for second in the championship will continue to Qatar.”
Rob Huff, Castrol Honda World Touring Car Team, said: “A sixth MAC3 win is great for Honda and shows how well all three drivers work together a team, but the pace in qualifying isn’t what we’d hoped for. We knew this would probably be the most difficult circuit of the season for us, both in terms of carrying 60kg of compensation weight and because the characteristics of the Civic, which make us near-unbeatable on street circuits, penalise us here. Tiago and I both made mistakes on our quickest laps while Norbi didn’t and made it into Q2. Ultimately even when you have the best chassis in the WTCC and probably the most driveable engine, if you don’t have the same straightline speed as the others, you’re going to suffer at a circuit like this with the long straights. That’s what happened to us today.”
Alessandro Mariani, Team Principal, said: “I’m pretty pleased to see us take MAC3 victory for the sixth time and it does give us some satisfaction after what happened in qualifying. We were a bit concerned with our pace in free practice, but nevertheless we came into qualifying with the target of getting two cars into the top 12 and we did not achieve this. During Q2 we understood that it would be extremely difficult to reach the top five, so our target was to ensure Norbi would start as high as possible for the reversed-grid opening race. He’s on the front row so that’s pretty good and there is a chance to at least be on the podium from there. It’s not the way we want to go racing, but we knew this would not be a great track for us so it gives us the opportunity to still come away with a strong result tomorrow.”
Daisuke Horiuchi, Large Project Leader WTCC, Honda R&D, said: “A front-row start for Norbi and MAC3 victory are the two positive things to come out of today, but they only mask the fact that today our pace was not what we were hoping for. We must remember that an opening race victory is there for the taking, just as it was in Japan when the car had even more compensation weight. That’s something worth fighting for, and as a team we’ll work extremely hard to improve the performance of the car tonight
