Civic Type R TCR on front row for all Macau races

“I’ve qualified second in both sessions and that makes me the best qualifier of the year in WTCR, which is great, but I’m still slightly disappointed not to get pole to end the season, so today’s a bit sweet and sour. The team have done an amazing job to make the car so fast and I have to thank Yann and Timo because we really drove as a team in qualifying. I really thought we had the speed to do it, but we’re 100 per cent in the fight to get a race win if we can start well. The four points were also very valuable as they keep me in the championship fight, but that’s not something I’m thinking too much about because the gap is still very big.”

“I have mixed feelings about qualifying. The positive is that the Honda has been fantastic and enabled me to be fast all day. The negative is that because of my grid penalty, I knew I had to sacrifice myself in Q1 to help Esteban and Timo with a tow, but I did that and then managed to qualify fourth without a tow, which shows how strong we are at Macau. Second qualifying was going really well and I made it into Q3 again, but I had an issue with the upshift and had to drive the final third of the lap one-handed because I was holding the paddle in place! That forces quite a mental recalibration, so who knows what I could have done without that.”

“This weekend so far has been much better than the past few races, even if the results sheets don’t show it. I start 18th for the Saturday race, but I’d easily have been two rows further up if I hadn’t encountered a wildcard, who backed off the throttle right in front of me at the worst possible time and lost me seven tenths minimum. That gave me a lot of confidence in the afternoon, but this time I had the same problem with backmarkers twice at the same place, and each time when I was in the peak tyre-performance window. What’s positive is that I’ve had equal ultimate performance with my team mate for the first time in a while.”

“It’s been a tough WTCR debut. We lost a bit of time in the sessions with an issue in the morning and then aother one later on, which meant I didn’t have time to get really comfortable with the car. We were starting to get there towards the end, so that gives me some hope for tomorrow. We know anything can happen on a street circuit tomorrow and with a lot of Macau rookies on the grid, I hope my experience here can help us take a strong finish.”

“Today has been a big challenge, as we knew it was going to be. We’ve never run the Civic Type R TCR on Yokohama tyres, never turned a lap of this circuit with the car and we’re running 20kg extra weight because we’re a wildcard. Despite this, we were the fastest wildcard entry in the first session and we know we’d have been further up without a couple of small technical issues, which cost us track time. We’re a bit lower than we hoped to be, but this is Macau and Andre is a master of overtaking here, so we will aim to race forwards tomorrow.”

“It’s extremely pleasing to see the Honda Civic Type R TCRs run very fast in Macau, which shows the great work the customer teams have done. I think the races will be a challenge because under the current BoP there are other cars with better top speed and it might be tough to overtake, but this is Macau and anything can happen. I’m sure the cars will be fast and there’s no reason not to finish the season well.”