The Castrol Honda Team successfully carried out the second test session with the new Civic WTCC, at Montmelo’s Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya from Tuesday to Friday.
The weather was sunny and bright, with warm temperatures for the four days. Gabriele Tarquini drove on the first three days and Tiago Monteiro took over today.
Daisuke Horiuchi, Project Leader Engine Development at Honda R&D said: “We are pleased because this track session confirmed the data we had found during our testing at the bench and enabled us to identify some areas that can be further developed by testing on the bench again. I’m especially thinking about the software for the engine management.”
JAS Motorsport Chief Designer Andrea Adamo added: “Thanks to the nice weather we were able to complete a few long runs over the race distance that were especially interesting for learning how to manage the tyres. On top of this, the warm temperatures of air and tarmac gave us valuable figures for the cooling of the car and the tyres.”
Team Principal Alessandro Mariani concluded: “I am very proud of the whole team. Everybody has worked very hard in the last couple of months. And this made possible to build the new car and run two test sessions so early without reporting any major technical issues and improving the performance consistently. It was a tough challenge!”
MONTEIRO: WE FEAR NOBODY!
Tiago Monteiro was the driver who drove the Honda Civic to its maiden WTCC appearances at the end of 2012.
Last year the Portuguese – a former podium finisher in F1 and a race winner in WTCC – team-up with Gabriele Tarquini in the Castrol Honda factory team. He struggled in the first part of the season, often sidelined by incidents and technical issues, but improved consistently race after race and was able to claim his first victory in the Civic at Shanghai.
Last year was the first full season for Honda after the three appearances in 2012. Were you happy of how the car progressed from Monza to Macau?
“Yes very much so! We started fighting for making the top-ten and struggling to finish some races due to reliability issues. But we ended fighting for podiums and victories at almost every race in the second part of the season, and got rid of reliability problems ! The evolution was clear and very good !”
TICKET PROMOTION FOR LE CASTELLET
Le Castellet’s Circuit Paul Ricard offers motorsports fans an exclusive promotion for the FIA WTCC Race of France that will take place on April 19th and 20th.
From Monday, February 17th, the first 5000 week-end packages for the event will be offered on sale at the reduced price of 18 € instead of 30 €.
The offer will be available on http://www.circuitpaulricard.com.
EUROSPORT CONFIRMS ETCC PRIZE MONEY
Eurosport Events, promoter of the FIA European Touring Car Cup, confirmed the organization of the Yokohama Trophy for the 2014 season.
Thanks to the support of Yokohama, ETCC official tyre supplier, up to 50,000 € of prize money will be awarded at each of the five race meetings; only competitors who will enter in the full season by the deadline of 31 March will be eligible for the prize money.
Details about the partition of the prize money among the different categories will be unveiled later.