As the world Touring Car Championship moves to Moscow for its first-ever appearance in Russia this weekend, bamboo-engineering’s Alex MacDowall admits that the weekend will be difficult to predict.
Although it will be MacDowall’s first-ever race in Russia, the situation is the same for the majority of the WTCC field, as the series takes to the Moscow Raceway which only opened in 2012.
“It’s difficult to know what to expect next weekend”, admitted MacDowall. “It all depends who gets used to the track the quickest. It’s quite tight and twisty but there is a really long straight which should play to our hand. The twisty bits won’t really help us due to the [compensation] weight we have to carry but I’m going out there with the intention of getting on the podium and fighting for Independents wins.
MacDowall is currently seventh overall in the championship, having scored two podiums to team-mate James Nash’s three, although Nash has also secured his maiden WTCC win. Consequently, MacDowall feels that he has been unlucky to be where he is in the standings as he has proven that he has the pace to beat Nash.
“We should have scored more points, what happened robbed us of a podium, so we need to make amends for that,” added the 22-year-old, referring to him being penalised in Austria last time out. “We’ve been a bit unlucky this year; they say you make your own luck but there wasn’t a lot I could do about all of that in Austria! I’m sure we’ll be competitive in Russia – it should be good.”
WTCC testing takes place at 14:00 MSK on Friday 7th June (11:00 BST; 12:00 CEST).