Luca Engstler says he “will throw everything” at the opening TCR Europe race at Hockenheim in his bid to start the weekend with some silverware.
The Hyundai Motorsport Customer Racing Junior Driver put in a late effort during qualifying at the 2.8-mile German circuit to put his i30 N TCR on the second row of the grid in third.
He will therefore start behind the Audi of joint championship leader Gilles Magnus and the Target Competition-run Hyundai of pole-sitter Josh Files.
“I will try to make the perfect start and I will push like hell for the first two laps and see how it goes,” said Engstler.
“I want be on the podium for the first race for sure, but I have nothing to lose as I am so far off in the championship, so I will throw everything at it.”
He also believes the expected high rate of tyre degradation could play a factor in deciding the outcome of the race, highlighting the work done by his team, M1RA, in understanding the car in those conditions so far this weekend.
“Tyre degradation will be quite high, so you never know what will happen, but I think we have a really good race pace; we worked a lot on the setup with old tyres and so I think we have a big advantage compared to the others.”
The opening race is set to get underway at 13:40 BST.