Gianni Morbidelli was in a relaxed mood after qualifying in seventh for the first TCR International Series race in Georgia, despite ending the session beached in the gravel.
The Italian is getting to grips with a new car this weekend, after the Swedish team took the decision to move away from the Honda machinery which had been run for the past two seasons.
With that in mind, Morbidelli was not too bothered about going off the track or being in the fight for pole position, feeling that he had extracted the most out of the car on this occasion.
“That was my limit and maybe I just made a mistake, because I was trying to be over that limit,” said Morbidelli to TouringCars.Net. “We are quite satisfied – of course we have to consider that this is the first time this season for us with the new car, and of course a new race engineer.
“We have to understand the car a little bit more. This is quite normal when you have a new car. As a reference, if we take [Jean-Karl] Vernay he won races and fought for the championship with that car, so we are not far [behind], just one tenth between us. That means it’s a good start.
“Of course, if we consider the performance of the other cars, we are quite far [behind]. The gap is quite big but at the moment we have to look at Vernay and his performance with the same car.”
Morbidelli avoided making any predictions regarding the championship battle this year, adding that he would prefer to start slowly and build momentum rather than win early on in the season.
“It’s always difficult to make a prediction in this championship; you have to be there at the right moment. The last two years have always started very well and in the middle of the season I was leading the championship, but then we finished terribly bad.
“I hope that this year it goes in a different way – we will start slowly and hope to improve during the season and finish in a better position!
“We have a new car – we did only two days [testing] in Barcelona [Parcmotor Castellolí] before we came here. It’s not enough to have experience at the moment to say we are 100% OK. We had never been there before and we had no references from the Honda, so we just did two days.
“We still have to work to understand the car a little bit more.”