Jean-Karl Vernay celebrated a ‘perfect weekend’ in the TCR Europe series at Monza, as the Audi driver took a pole and two wins to haul himself back into title contention with just one round remaining.
Vernay followed up his victory in Saturday’s first race with another win in the reverse-grid contest on Sunday, moving the Frenchman to just 19 points from the top of the championship table and putting him second overall.
By the end of the opening lap Vernay had hauled his Leopard Lukoil Audi into sixth position, from tenth on the grid, and as he passed the Honda of Josh Files for fourth he then benefitted from contact ahead between Benjamin Lessennes and Dušan Borković at the first chicane, handing him second.
It was then just a matter of time before Vernay took the lead, and he duly passed early leader Francisco Abreu’s Peugeot on lap three along the main start-finish straight.
A maximum 55-point haul made it a perfect weekend for Vernay, who has been playing catchup ever since he had to miss the Zandvoort round due to a clash with WTCR.
“We said we had to make pole and win both races and we made it, so it’s always nice,” said Vernay to TouringCars.Net. “The car was just great. I made a much better start today and the first two laps were quite tough, but I was able to avoid the guys and make some good passes and get into the lead quite quickly.
“Borković and Lessennes touched each other at Turn 1 on lap two, so I was able to overtake them. I had already made passes on [Maxime] Potty, Abreu and [Attila] Tassi so it was good.
“After that I was able to control the race – I was watching it in my mirror and hoping for a bad result for the other contenders.
“Everything went well – we used the performance of the car, which was really good compared to yesterday.”
Whilst now firmly in title contention, Vernay still feels that the gap to himself and Mikel Azcona is too great, as he has to try to outscore the Spaniard at his and his team’s home circuit.
“It’s cool, but 19 points is still too far, and I think it’s going to be difficult, because CUPRA will be super-quick at their ‘test track’.
“We have also made some mistakes this year – at Spa I forgot to pump the brake and broke the driveshaft and in Hungary we made a big strategy mistake in qualifying. On top of that we missed one event. But I don’t make them as excuses – we just need to do a good job.
“For sure I would love to win the championship but there are some great guys who are not making any mistakes, so its going to be tough.
“There are no excuses – we will just try to do the best we can and if we finish P2 or P3 well, it’s going to be like this.
“I’ll just try to be at 100% in Barcelona. If it continues this way, then it’s going to be tough as Azcona is doing a proper job.
“If I had driven at Zandvoort it would have been another story, because there we were super quick, taking pole and winning the main race in WTCR. But it’s like this and it’s a challenge.”