Career best qualifying for James Nash at Marrakech

James Nash qualified as the best placed Chevrolet in his second weekend with the bamboo-engineering team, and in doing so took both his own and bamboo’s best qualifying result in the Championship.

The 27-year-old went third fastest on his first flying lap in Q2 to slot behind Gabriele Tarquini’s Honda and Yvan Muller’s Chevrolet, then found more time on his second lap to pip Muller for second, which with a disrupted final run for the front-runners saw Nash hold on to the front row for the first race tomorrow.

“I’ve been having my own issues in learning certain parts of the car,” said Nash to TouringCarTimes. “Throughout the day we’ve made steps up and I think after the free practices we didn’t expect to be quite so high up.

“I knew my game plan and that was to get behind some of the others and use a bit of a tow…as Gabriele says, the tow’s worth three to four tenths around here.”

Looking ahead to tomorrow’s race, a race Nash led from the reversed grid pole with the Arena Motorsport Ford last year, he’s optimistic of a strong result.

“I’ve got every opportunity just like everybody else,” he said. “Yvan’s very knowledgable about rolling starts, Gabriele looks like he has a good car under him…it sort of reminds me of the Ford, it’s a bit softer, takes the kerbs very well but we don’t know about the tyre life.

“I want to aim for the podium and the Yokohama win and if I can get the overall win even better.”