Esteban Guerrieri believes he is in ‘a good place to fight from’ after heading up the third row in qualifying for Sunday’s FIA World Touring Car Cup (WTCR) race at the Slovakia Ring.
The Honda Civic Type R racer held provisional pole for the majority of the Super Pole, but was bested by late charges from Aurelien Comte’s Peugeot 308 and the Hyundai i30 N TCR of pole sitter Norbert Michelisz.
It also means the Argentine will start this evening’s reverse grid race at 18:00 BST from eighth on the grid, giving him an opportunity to recover lost ground after a broken rear-left tow link meant a DNF in the opener.
Speaking to TouringCars.net after the session, Guerrieri was pleased with a spirit-lifting performance to reinvigorate the team for the rest of the weekend.
“For the result I’m happy, it’s good to be in Q3 and to recover quickly from difficult situations; that’s a bit of my aim or goal in life – you’ll always have difficult moments, it’s how you come back from that and rebuild the team spirit,” he explained.
“This time we could do this. It was an unfortunate Race 1 with the first lap incident and overall we are very close, different cars have different good areas on the track but overall the lap time is very close, except maybe a little bit for one Hyundai, for Norbi [Michelisz], who did a very good lap.
“For sure, we don’t have the best performance overall but we are right there and it’s a good place to fight from.”
He also admitted some time was left on the table, with a notable moment at Turn 1 on his fastest lap, with reactive oversteer kicking in after Guerrieri leant on the brakes heading into the right-hander.
“At Turn 1 I had a moment. I had my braking reference, I thought I had an edge on the braking and when I went for that I had reactive oversteer, so I knew I had to get that back around the lap, which I did with my best sector two and a good sector three,” he added.
“I think overall, we got the best out of the situation we could.”
Looking ahead to the remaining two races, he insists his focus first is on finishing and scoring points, and beyond that staying as far up the order as possible.
“To be honest, first we have to finish. This season, for me, has been so many mistakes – small things that had a big influence on my results.
“In the end, all that I’m aiming for is finishing, and then as high as we can, of course.”