Alessandro Mariani, Team Principal of the Castrol Honda World Touring Car team, says he is happy with Honda’s testing progress after the team completred its third test session with the new Civic at Paul Ricard in France.
Honda have been testing at the circuit in the south of France this week alongside Citroën, with both manufacturer’s embarking on extensive test sessions with their new cars ahead of the new season in just over one month’s time.
Mariani, boss of JAS Motorsport who run the cars, says that despite a few teething problems early on with the car progress has been good and improvements are coming quickly.
“When you start testing with a car that was built for new technical regulations, the first thing you must seek is reliability,” explained Mariani. “If the car is not reliable, you cannot test properly and this becomes a major problem when you are working on a tight schedule. We had a few youth issues and solved them quickly.
“We were able to investigate a couple of different options in the development, which proved that the car is sound and reacts always in the way we expect. Testing is crucial. We have started long after Citroën, but before the others. All in all we are happy, because the car is improving quickly and we are now focusing on the tuning set up for the homologation.”
Mariani also explained that despite beginning testing relatively late compared to Citroën, who began testing their new car in earnest in the second half of 2013, the team are confident as they did not rush into building an interim test car.
“We also took into account the plan of building a laboratory car just for testing the new 18 inch tyres,” explained Mariani at the test session in Paul Ricard. “However, because finalizing the regulations was taking a longer time, we opted for start testing after the new car was ready. This was the only solution quick enough for building in time the two works cars and the additional two for the customer teams.”
Despite the challenges associated with getting to grips with new machinery, Mariani actually believes that hte new cars could be easier to set up on race weekends due to having more options regarding the suspension design.
“If we speak about the chassis, they are even easier because of less constraints in suspension design,” said Mariani. “Setting them up is more difficult, because of the aerodynamics that is now an important factor; it changes from track to track and is influenced by a lot of parameters. This will favour teams and drivers who have had previous experience with formula and sports cars.”
As well as the two works cars run by JAS Motorsport in 2014 an additional two cars are being built for independent teams Zengő Motorsport and Proteam Racing. Mariani explained that with customer racing an important part of Honda’s programme that it was important to ensure that the cars were complete and tested on time ahead of the new season.
“Customers are an important part of Honda’s WTCC programme and we cannot be late in delivering their cars,” added Mariani. “We are happy we went this way, because after only a few test sessions the new Civic is already on a good level.
“We provide the car, a reference technician and all set-up data. We also keep them [customer teams] updated on every technical improvement. Honda’s policy is very much customer-oriented and we at JAS Motorsport fully share this view. And it pays off, as it was proved last year from Michelisz’s win at Suzuka.”