Citroën’s new World Touring Car Champion José María López says that he is “delighted” to have taken pole position for the final WTCC event of the season on the Circuito da Guia in Macau, having never previously had the chance to race on the track.
López was on top form throughout qualifying, topping Q2 and the all-important Q3 sessions having earlier been third fastest in Q1. In the end the Argentine driver took his seventh pole of the season by 0.228 seconds from Sébastien Loeb, with Yvan Muller third and Ma Qing Hua 11th.
“I will remember this pole position for a long time,” said López, who is enjoying his first visit to the former Portuguese colony. “Macau is a circuit I have been wanting to discover for over ten years. But I never raced here in F3. My chance has come at the wheel of a Citroën WTCC!
“I did a lot of work on a simulator before I got here, but it’s a circuit that takes more time to adapt to than others. Given a clear track, you could be tempted to take the Mandarin Bend at top speed. But there are rails, so you need to go at it gradually to build your confidence. Seb and Yvan put me under pressure once again, but I’m delighted to have clocked the fastest time today.”
Loeb adopted an unusual approach to parts of the street circuit, drawing on his rallying experience to take the notoriously tight Melco hairpin with the use of his handbrake. However on his final Q3 run Loeb avoided this technique and equalled his best qualifying performance of the year.
“We improved all the way through free practice and I felt really good in the car in qualifying,” explained the Frenchman. “The second sector, the most winding part of the course, was where I made the most progress. I even tried using the handbrake on the hairpin, but it didn’t work out every time.
“In my Q3 lap, I made a slight mistake, braking too late before the last bend. And as I wasn’t very good over the first sector, Pechito won pole.”
Outgoing champion Muller acknowledged that he simply wasn’t quick enough in qualifying, with his lap time being almost half a second slower than that of López.
“Everybody wants to finish the season on a high. I just wasn’t the fastest man out there today,” admitted Muller. “We are having some difficulty rectifying my car’s understeering, and that makes things tough for me in the winding section.”
Citroën’s Chinese driver Ma Qing Hua says that he was aiming for tenth position on the race two reverse grid – a risky strategy which didn’t work out, leaving him to start both of Sunday’s races from 11th position.
“I didn’t start Q2 with the ideal setup,” conceded Ma. “We didn’t have time to change everything and we decided to focus on tenth place, which would give me pole position for race two. In the end, it wasn’t to be, and I’ll have to start both races from eleventh spot.”
The final two races of the season take place at 11:15 and 12:30 local time on Sunday (04:15 and 05:30 CET; 03:15 and 04:30 GMT).