Reece Barr was unhappy with the way his disallowed lap time in Saturday’s TCR Europe qualifying session impacted the rest of his weekend, with the Irishman unable to get his time reinstated as it occurred in first qualifying.
Barr had set a time good enough for seventh just before the end of the first part of qualifying on Saturday morning, but his lap was deleted as he was alleged to have exceeded track limits.
It put the Target Competition driver outside the top 12 and unable to progress any further in qualifying, compromising the rest of his weekend.
What made matters more frustrating for Barr was that after second qualifying had finished, several drivers appealed their deleted laps from that session which were successful.
But since Barr’s infringement happened in Q1, and the session could not be re-run, he had to accept a starting position in 14th for both races.
That left the Hyundai driver only able to recover to 11th and tenth in the two races respectively, with overtaking difficult at the TT Circuit Assen.
“Considering the whole qualifying thing, I wasn’t really happy with the track limits thing,” said Barr to TouringCars.Net. “Some people got their laps reinstated, but other people didn’t depending on which part of qualifying you were in. It was a bit unfair.
“The lap that I had done with the very slight altercation was good enough for seventh in Q1, which was comfortably in, because it was in the later stages and there weren’t many people who were going to improve with faster laps.”
Having seen video footage of some of the later laps which were reinstated, when asked if he felt his lap was any different, Barr said he was confident that his would also have been restored had it been possible.
“I definitely think so. I’ve seen some of the onboards that did get reinstated and they were more outside the track than I was.”
Despite losing the chance of a stronger result, Barr was pleased to prove his potential – underlined by the fact that he put in the second-fastest and the fastest time in first and second practice respectively.
“It was the only real disadvantage to the whole weekend – I feel that both races were actually really good – I was just in the wrong position.
“We had good starts, good passing, no damage and no real contact. It was two good races. We just weren’t where we wanted to be which was further up and we had the pace to be further up.
“Overall it was a good weekend considering the whole qualifying thing, so I’m happy about that.”