James Thompson and his LADA Sport team have admitted that they are expecting a ‘nice fight’ in Rounds 15 and 16 of the WTCC in Argentina, with Thompson starting from 11th and 12th places for the two races respectively.
Thompson originally qualified in 12th for the two races, having only completed one run in Q2. However the Brit will benefit from an engine change penalty for Honda’s Tiago Monteiro in race one, elevating him one place to 11th on the starting grid.
After qualifying, Thompson was actually disappointed with his result, which was his worst of the weekend so-far having been sixth and ninth fastest in Saturday’s two practice sessions. It is the fourth consecutive time that the LADA driver has made it into Q2.
“I’m a bit disappointed with our result so far as we’ve been consistently in the top 10 during free practice,” admitted Thompson. “I think we had one or two small technical or set-up problems in qualifying because the car was actually slower than it had been in the morning. But I’m sure we’ll get to the bottom of this before the actual races.
“Anyway, we need to look at the positives: we’re consistently in Q2 now and I’m actually pretty optimistic about tomorrow’s race. There are plenty of overtaking opportunities and I’m looking forward to getting stuck into them from the very beginning!”
Commenting on the new Autódromo Termas de Río Hondo, Thompson admitted that the circuit carried unique challenges for the WTCC as it was particularly slippery off-line, comparing it to like ‘driving on glass’.
“This is a very interesting track. It’s the same overall length as Porto – 4.8 kilometres – but the layout is very different and the track is extremely wide,” added Thompson. “The surface is a bit slippery as the track hasn’t been used for some time and there’s some dust on the surface too. So we’re expecting a nice fight.”
There was disappointment for Thompson’s young Russian team-mate Mikhail Kozlovskiy, however. Having equalled his best outright qualifying result of the year, he had all his qualifying times disallowed as his team had plugged a laptop into his car in Parc Fermé conditions. Kozlovskiy will thus start from 23rd and lost for both races.
“Of course I’m disappointed by the results from qualifying, but now I must concentrate on tomorrow’s race and use all the opportunities that this track presents,” said Kozlovskiy. “It’s very wide and fast and I think we can use various tactics to make up some positions here.
“I feel very confident at this circuit, as in Free Practice 2 I was 12th, which shows our potential. I think we will be able to fight for some positions and overtake tomorrow, despite not starting from such a great position.”
Round 15 takes place at 18:20 BST (19:20 CEST; 14:20 ART).