After securing pole position for the opening FIA World Touring Car Cup race on the streets of Vila Real, Cyan Racing’s Santiago Urrutia admits that he still has to ‘see what the strategy is’ for Sunday’s races.
Urrutia claimed pole on Saturday by a margin of just 0.049 seconds from fellow Lynk & Co driver Yann Ehrlacher, marking the Uruguayan’s first pole of the season.
The 25-year-old was pleased to score the third pole of his WTCR career, and added that he had even made a slight mistake on his final run.
“Q3 is all about, especially on street circuits, taking risks, you know? You go flat out and give everything you have, and that’s what I did,” explained Urrutia.
“I made a small mistake in sector two and sector one that cost me a little bit of speed, and I said I’m going to go for it in sector three and I pushed.
“Finally, it was a good lap. But then I wasn’t sure if it was a good lap but of course I had Yann behind me running last.
“But what to say? As you say it’s my first time here. I had good speed at Pau as well and that was my first time on a street circuit, very good here since FP1.
“This is because I have a good car from Cyan, so I have to thank all the boys that they give me a really fast car to put it on pole today.”
In the drivers’ championship standings, Urrutia is just one point ahead of reigning champion Ehrlacher, as the best-ranked Cyan driver in the standings.
But despite that, he said after qualifying that he wasn’t sure what the team strategy would be for Sunday, with Urrutia having not been handed the same inter-team advantage that was proffered to Ehrlacher at the previous round in Aragón, when Yvan Muller allowed Ehrlacher past him but not Urrutia.
“We have both cars on pole position because Yvan is in P10 [resulting in pole for the partially-reversed race two] and Yann is P2 so this is really good for us, for us as a team.
“If we can do a good strategy we can obviously go for the win in both races. I’m super-happy to have Yann as well, being quick the whole day, and to finish the job in qualifying is really good.
“Let’s see what the strategy is for tomorrow. But definitely everyone is happy at Cyan.”