Pepe Oriola was pleased to return to the podium in the World Touring Car Cup (WTCR) races in Wuhan, with second for the CUPRA driver lifting him to sixth overall in the drivers’ championship standings.
Oriola finished the race behind winner Jean-Karl Vernay, having also started alongside the Audi driver on the front row of the grid.
Whilst the Spaniard was unable to keep pace with the WRT driver, which he believes was due to Vernay having a track time advantage, he scored his sixth podium of the season to keep himself at the sharp end of the standings.
“I’m really happy,” said Oriola. “As Jean-Karl said, after Ningbo which was really hard for us, we managed to come back.
“Yesterday was really good when I was fastest in first practice, but in qualifying today I struggled to put a lap together, but finally I did it on the last lap.
“In the race I was just following Jean-Karl and I was lucky Yann [Ehrlacher] was holding up Gordon [Shedden] for a while. He was much faster than me.
“They know the track better because they have been running in Formula 4 for two days before me. Today I just could not fight with them.”