Gianni Morbidelli says he is “overwhelmed” by understeer on his Münnich Motorsport Chevrolet Cruze, after the Italian qualified in ninth for the World Touring Car Championship races in Hungary.
Morbidelli has a new race engineer for the WTCC races in Hungary, with David Hodge joining the 46-year-old in Budapest. Morbidelli admits that despite this he is still struggling with the set-up of his new Cruze, which is around two seconds off the pace.
“If anything I have a new race engineer here in Hungary, someone to share my ailments with…,” joked Morbidelli. “Joking apart, since Friday we, and I mean both my team mate René and me, were overwhelmed by a massive understeer. I am pretty happy with the way the Cruze behaves in the first section of the circuit, but as we move to the twisty section we are stuck there forever, also compared to some of the other Chevys.”
Morbidelli admits that he would like more testing under his belt, after having covered a negligible amount of mileage compared to both Citroën and Honda.
“To find a cure to this kind of disease we should go testing and testing and testing,” added Morbidelli, who has scored a best result of sixth so far in 2014. “Unfortunately that’s a kind of luxury we’ll not have as the next WTCC round [in Slovakia] beckons next Sunday. Taking into account this backdrop, honestly I could not do a lot better than what I did in Qualifying.
“Of course tomorrow I look forward to start race two from a convenient position and I’ll try to make the most of any chance to post points, but dreaming of going all the way to the chequered flag, that would be nothing but deluding myself.”