Münnich Motorsport’s Gianni Morbidelli admits that he is pleased to have secured pole position for the second World Touring Car Championship race at Spa-Francorchamps by qualifying in tenth, but admits that it is ‘not what he is aiming for’.
Italian Morbidelli secured his second reverse-grid front-row start of the season in qualifying by being tenth fastest. Indeed it is the 46-year-old’s first reverse grid pole of the season. However the former F1 driver admits that the result is ‘not what he is aiming for’.
“I can’t deny that I am delighted to again have a chance to start race two from pole position, as happened in Budapest with the best of the possible outcomes,” admitted Morbidelli. “But, first things first: we cannot forget that being in that position tomorrow means being in P10, and unfortunately these were the values that qualifying has gauged today at Spa-Francorchamps.
“This is not what our team or myself are aiming for when we step into the WTCC paddock, of course. But this was more or less the position that we had to fight for yesterday and today.
Morbidelli has been scraping the tail end of the top ten throughout the early stages of the weekend, ending Friday testing in tenth and first and second practice in 13th and tenth respectively. The Italian admits that part of the problem has come from too much understeer on his Chevrolet Cruze.
“From Friday testing on we’ve struggled with a nasty understeer and the attempts we’ve made to fix it, even overhauling the car, did not remedy this problem,” explained Morbidelli. “We were trying to fix it, but we were not even able to trim it, let alone make it disappear.
“Sadly there’s no such thing as a silver bullet to get back on track, but we will try all we can to make the most of the race two starting position.”