Local hero Norbert Michelisz part of team time trial-winning squad
Driving error punished as Citroën drops from first to second
LADA back in the points following Slovakia exit
Honda has claimed its first outright victory in the WTCC Manufacturers Against the Clock team time trial after a penalty dropped Citroën from first to second at the Hungaroring.
Citroën was set to celebrate its third consecutive WTCC MAC3 top score by a narrow 0.174s margin over Honda. However, a track limit infringement by Mehdi Bennani – who formed part of Citroën’s three-car team along with José María López and Yvan Muller – resulted in a 30-second time penalty and a one-place demotion.
LADA, which finished third with Nicky Catsburg, Gabriele Tarquini and Hugo Valente, was also penalised by 30 seconds when Valente also fell foul of the track limit rules at Turn 11.
WTCC MAC3 was inspired by professional cycling events such as the Tour de France and both incidents underlined the importance of effective team work with on-track errors having a major impact on the final result.
And the amended result means Honda celebrates its second maximum WTCC MAC3 score having tied on time with Citroën in Slovakia. Honda also moves seven points clear of Citroën in the WTCC Manufacturers’ standings following the strong showing by its trio of Rob Huff, Norbert Michelisz and Tiago Monteiro in the Civic WTCC, who performed without fault over two laps of the 4.381-kilometre layout.
WTCC MAC3 results
Honda: 3m41.712s (10 points)
Citroën: +29.826s (8 points)*
LADA: +31.316s (6 points)*
*Time penalty of 30 seconds applies. Results remain provisional.
A transcript of the press conference, which took place prior to the time penalties being applied appears below.
FIA World Touring Car Championship 2016: Rounds 5 and 6 of 24
WTCC Race of Hungary, Hungaroring, 22-24 April
POST-WTCC MAC3 PRESS CONFERENCE
Media Centre, Hungaroring, 17h40, Saturday 23 April 2016
Present:
Yves Matton, Citroën, first position
Alessandro Mariani, Honda, second position
Viktor Shapovolov, LADA, third position
Q:
Turning to Yves Matton, another 10 points for Citroën in WTCC MAC3, congratulations for that achievement. Did the strategy go completely to plan or was something not quite right for your team?
YM:
I have to say it was quite like we expected. Maybe like always we’ve seen that the start is really important and for sure the idea was to have Mehdi on the third place, but OK he was able to do a better start and that’s the reason he was able to be between José and Yvan.
Q:
Citroën still trails Honda in the WTCC Manufacturers’ standings but it’s still very close…
YM:
We still have a lot of points to get tomorrow. It’s difficult to make a conclusion now, we will wait until after the two races. The configuration will be a little bit different with two cars on the front for the first race and only one for the second race and we will make the calculation at the end of the weekend.
Q:
Alessandro, not quite the 10 points that we saw in Slovakia where it was a dead heat between Citroën and Honda, but still a very good performance by your three drivers. Can you summarise what you saw on track today and what you thought about their efforts?
AM:
I’m pretty satisfied. Again, after Q2 it was more positive than after Q3 but in general the gap with more or less the same weight of Citroën is much smaller than the previous seasons so we can finally recognise our big efforts to recover the gap. MAC3 confirmed this trend because at the end the difference was again very, very short, and we were 10 kilos only different. Tomorrow the forecasts are not very brilliant so it will be a very tricky race and so everything can happen. As Yves said, tomorrow evening you can understand where we are.
Q:
Viktor, LADA was back scoring point in WTCC MAC3, what would you say about the performance of your three drivers?
VS:
Today unfortunately we had some troubles with the performance and car adjustment as we don’t have any experience of running 50 kilos of ballast, it’s the first time we’re carrying this weight. So we still have some trouble but we keep pushing.
Q:
In terms of the race tomorrow, what do you think we can see from your drivers?
VS:
I don’t know, so we’ll see.
Q:
Turning back to Yves, obviously it’s not just WTCC MAC3 victory you’re celebrating here, it’s also qualifying on the DHL Pole Position for WTCC Race of Hungarytomorrow. Again, pole position for the Citroën C-Elysée, what do you think about the performance of the car again this weekend?
YM:
I think we’ve struggled a little bit more than expected with the new track. It’s still strange for us and maybe for the rest, we have to understand some time during the weekend, but OK, at the end, José María did again a great job to take the pole position. It’s always when you only have one car doing MAC3, it’s always much more stress on the shoulders.
Questions from the floor:
Q:
Question to Yves Matton (Szilvia Magyar, Motorzaj.hu, Hungary): Will we see any other drivers in MAC3 during the season or is Bennani your third driver?
YM:
No, we are choosing our third driver each time, one week before the event. It’s only I would say known for the next event, I have taken the decision, because it will be Morocco and for sure it will be Mehdi again but after that everything is open.
Q:
Question to all (Rene de Boer, Autosport Japan): Now you have a bit more experience with MAC3 three weekends into the season, can you give a little bit of a verdict on how the system works and what’s your opinion on the format?
AM:
As I’ve already said it’s an exciting game for the spectators, also for the teams. In the three events that we’ve already done, we saw very small differences, firstly between LADA and Citroën, the second the same time as Citroën and today only one tenth’s difference. So it’s a nice game and also technically speaking it has to be adapted to the race track because the Slovakia Ring for instance is a different track to here so we had to modify the strategy with the track. Anyway, I like it a lot.
YM:
The first thing to say is that it’s much more difficult than expected to have the right strategy, and I don’t think that we have the 100 per cent final strategy for the moment. For sure, after three races it showed that it’s interesting and things happened during the two laps. We’ve seen what are the main points that could make a difference at the end, and the differences are close at the moment and everything will be very important.
VS:
I think it’s a very interesting competition and I think at each race, each event, it will be more and more intense.
