Néstor Girolami admitted a poor qualifying session in Saudi Arabia meant it was ‘difficult to digest’ the end of his FIA World Touring Car Cup championship aspirations in Jeddah.
The Münnich Motorsport driver was always an outsider for the title, having to out-qualifying Azcona and ensure his rival scored no more than three points in qualifying.
But in the end, the Honda driver lacked even the pace to do that, with Girolami struggling to the tenth fastest time in Q1 before ending up slowest of all 12 cars in Q2.
Even though his title hopes were over by this stage, the Argentine’s poor session was compounded when he was later stripped of all of his times when his car was found to have insufficient fuel in after qualifying, leaving him to start both of Sunday’s races from the back of the grid.
“It was a tough day to be honest,” said Girolami. “Much like we have done for the past few seasons at Aragón, here we were struggling a lot with top speed and couldn’t do anything compared to the frontrunners. That’s the case for all of us Honda drivers.
“It’s difficult to digest because I want to finish the season on a high and this makes it a bit more difficult tomorrow.
“But this is what we have for now and we’ll be sure to fight until the end.
“I want to congratulate Mikel Azcona for winning the title. He is a deserving winner, so well done to him and his team.”