Johan Kristoffersson blasted the ‘politics and playing’ in the FIA World Touring Car Cup paddock at Zandvoort, despite the Volkswagen driver scoring his best result of the year in the first race.
Kristoffersson finished race one in fourth after passing Lynk & Co’s Andy Priaulx on the final lap of the race, easily surpassing his previous best result in the series.
Whilst the Swede was happy with that result, he was also heavily critical of what he perceives as ‘politics and playing’ by some of the teams, pointing to the performance by the four Cyan Racing Lynk & Co cars in qualifying which went fastest by a seven tenths margin.
“BoP is a factor – we are lighter this week in comparison to the Slovakiaring, which is a super high-speed track which absolutely doesn’t suit our car at all,” said Kristoffersson to TouringCars.Net.
“There are two things which are in our favour at Zandvoort, and they are weight and the circuit, which suits us much better.
“[BoP] is what I don’t like – it’s too much politics, playing backwards and forwards and sand-bagging. What if they [Cyan Racing] hadn’t been that fast in qualifying, if they had been controlling it better, would they still have 100%? This really makes me sick.
“I will just try to do my best and improve my times from today tomorrow and see where it can bring us, but obviously we are closer now than when they had 100%.
“We will try to do our best but at the same time it was super tight behind me in qualifying, so we have to really continue to analyse and be as best as we can tomorrow to keep our position and maybe gain a few.”
Kristoffersson enjoyed his battles with three-time WTCC champion Priaulx, feeling that he was able to extract more performance from the tyres during the race.
“I had a very good start, so from there I was enjoying the fight with Priaulx in the first couple of corners.
“I managed to take him in the last lap at the exit of T3, so I finished P4. For the first time all year I could really play with the car during the race – I could use the front tyres differently, not just driving on the limit all the time.
“I could rotate the car differently and it was more alive, so I could do something; it was nice.”