Josh Files is looking to make a solid start to his TCR Europe campaign after heading up the third row of the grid in qualifying at Circuit Paul Ricard.
The double TCR Germany Champion and TCR Europe Trophy race winner clocked a best time of 2:14.392 seconds around the 3.6 mile circuit, and starts alongside the Hyundai i30 N TCR of Reece Barr.
By virtue of that result, the Brit will start the reverse grid race from Sunday identically placed, with Files confident there is still performance to be gained – though he doubts matching the pace that gave Dušan Borković pole position is possible.
“Our one lap performance is quite good, actually,” Files told TouringCars.net in Le Castellet.
“It’s still probably the best chassis on the grid. I made a few mistakes, I never put the sectors together and in the second part of qualifying I actually had a good lap until the last couple of turns, I was in the wrong gears.
“I think we still could have found a little bit [more time] – probably not to the Borkovic level but we can find a bit in the car and maybe could have been second or third – but it’s all ‘ifs and buts’!
“Both me and the team are happy with fifth, from there you can have two extremely good races. It’s a long season, we need to make the best of what we’ve got now and hope that things will come to us later in the season.”
The 2013 Renault UK Clio Cup Champion admitted he isn’t sure where the Honda Civic Type R FK7 will stack up to it’s rivals in race-trim.
“This is the struggle,” he explained.
“I know that we’re as fast as we’re going to go in a straight line, from our own setup. I’ve seen the other cars in parc ferme and know that they can only go faster in a straight line, they can’t really get slower, so I don’t really know.”
“We’ll just have to see how it goes. If I can make a good start and get to the front, you’ll be damn sure I’ll be there. But it is going to be tricky, it won’t be easy. Maybe with the slipstream we can keep up.”
The opening race at Paul Ricard gets underway at 14:40 CEST.