Honda secured a front-row qualifying position and a MAC3 victory at the eighth round of the FIA World Touring Car Championship at Termas de Rio Hondo in Argentina.
Norbert Michelisz put his Civic WTCC in second place on the grid for Sunday’s Main Race with fellow factory drivers Rob Huff and Tiago Monteiro qualifying fifth and eighth respectively at the twisty 4.8km circuit
Having put himself into the pole position shoot-out with flying lap right at the end of Q2 that was good enough for fifth place, Michelisz set a high benchmark with his fastest lap of the weekend in Q3.
That proved good enough for second place on the Main Race grid, equalling the Hungarian’s best qualifying performance of the season and giving him four bonus championship points. He will start Sunday’s opening race, in which the grid is partially reversed, from ninth spot.
Team-mates Rob and Tiago did exactly what was needed to progress comfortably into Q2, but unfortunately ended up outside of the Q3 positions by five and 15 hundredths of a second respectively.
Rob – who encountered slower traffic on his fastest Q2 lap – and Tiago will start the Main Race from sixth and eighth spots.
Tiago starts the earlier Sprint Race from third place with Rob fifth, meaning this is the sixth time in eight rounds in 2016 in which all three factory drivers have made the top 10.
Following qualifying, the eighth MAC3 session of the season, in which three cars from each participating marque take part in a ‘team time trial’ for manufacturers’ championship points, was held.
After beating the initial benchmark time by over three seconds, Norbert, Tiago and Rob remained on top of the table for the remainder, ensuring a fifth victory of the season – a mark unmatched by any of their WTCC rivals.
Sunday’s Opening Race takes place at 1410 local time with the Main Race getting underway at 1520.
Norbert Michelisz, Honda Racing Team JAS, said: “I’m delighted because I honestly didn’t expect that I could be on the front row at this circuit. In Q3 it was very close, but it seemed that – just like in Portugal – the drivers who made the least mistakes on their flying lap were going to be the drivers that benefitted the most. I’m also really pleased because last year, with a similar amount of compensation weight, we were about a second off the pace and now we’re so much closer, so I have to thank the team for the fantastic work they’ve done all year on the Civic. A podium tomorrow is the very least I’ll be aiming for.”
Rob Huff, Castrol Honda World Touring Car Team, said: “While I’m very happy with the team performance to win MAC3, I’m quite disappointed with the result in qualifying. I know I had the pace in the Civic to at least match Norbi’s front-row spot, but unfortunately I caught traffic on my fastest lap right at the end of Q2 and that compromised me a bit through the corners, meaning I ended up missing Q3 by just five hundredths of a second or so. I start P6 for the Main Race and P5 for the Opening Race, so there should, at least, be some good points on offer tomorrow.”
Tiago Monteiro, Castrol Honda World Touring Car Team, said: “It was a strange session in that there were no mistakes and no issues with the car, but we just weren’t quite fast enough in what was an incredibly close fight. There were a couple of cars with no compensation weight that were very fast, and that we wouldn’t normally expect to be up at the front, so that just increased the competition a bit, which meant that in Q2, despite only being a tenth off the Q3 places, I was P8. The real positive is that from P3 on the Opening Race grid, we should have the pace to win, or at least be on the podium.”
Alessandro Mariani, Team Principal, said: “I’m happy with today’s results. Not only because we’re on the front row for the Main Race and have won MAC3 for the fifth time this year, but also because this is not a circuit where we have achieved many strong results in the past, so this is pretty encouraging. Norbi did a superb job to improve by such a big margin between Q2 and Q3, but I’m also sorry for Rob, who missed out on Q3 by just a few hundredths of a second; a really tiny margin. Tomorrow will be tough because there are some strong cars around us on both race grids, but we’ll try our hardest.”
Daisuke Horiuchi, Large Project Leader WTCC Development, Honda R&D, said: “Today we have won MAC3 for the fifth time in 2016 – more than any other manufacturer in the WTCC – thanks to a great team performance by not only our drivers, but by our engineers and mechanics too. We also have Norbi qualifying P2, which is the fifth time the Civic has qualified on the front row this year. Tomorrow we have a great chance to secure some very strong results and this will be our aim.”