Honda’s Alessandro Mariani says that his team can “tackle the upcoming races with plenty of confidence” after his team recently completed the build and first test of the sixth World Touring Car Championship TC1 Civic.
Honda had built five of the new TC1 Civics for the start of the 2014 season, with two going to the works’ JAS team, one to Zengő Motorsport, one to Proteam Racing and one to be used as a spare and test chassis.
However the accident between works driver Gabriele Tarquini and Münnich Motorsport’s Gianni Morbidelli in practice at the season opener in Marrakech wrote off the car, necessitating the team to prepare the test chassis as a race car for the following meeting in France.
“Before the start of the season we built five cars: two for the Castrol Honda World Touring Car Team, two for Zengõ Motorsport and Proteam Racing, plus a chassis for the test team,” explained Mariani, Managing Director of J.A.S. Motorsport. “It’s well known that the chassis that was meant for the test team had to be prepared for the race in Paul Ricard, following Gabriele Tarquini’s crash in Marrakech.
“That completely changed our planning, because not only did we have five meetings that closely followed each other, we also could not rely on the information of a test team. Because of that busy schedule we could only start building the new car, chassis no. 6, in the second half of June, and the earliest opportunity to test it was last week on the Spanish track of Valencia.”
With the original Civic tests also having taken place at Valencia back in March, Mariani says the recent test allowed the team to draw some valuable comparisons in how the car has changed over the four months since. Thus the Italian is looking forward to the WTCC’s second-ever visit to Argentina this weekend.
“Valencia is the track where we rolled out the current Civic,” continued Mariani. “And even though the car has improved since then and there are much higher temperatures in Valencia now than during that first test in March, it was a great opportunity to use the data of that very first test session.
“It provides us with the time to optimise our current situation, thoroughly test some new parts such as different options in suspension and to understand whether or not we can continue to evolve in the right direction. We’re obviously keeping our cards close to our chest, but I think we can say that we will tackle the upcoming races with plenty of confidence.”
Honda’s Large Project leader Daisuke Horiuchi confirmed that the teams have received a number of updates to the engine on the Civic.
“Engine-wise, since Spa we’ve had some updates and in Valencia we were able to try some different set-ups,” added Horiuchi. “So we’re very much looking forward to seeing them in action in the next race and performing well.”