Gianni Morbidelli predicts tough night race

Gianni Morbidelli just missed out on pole position by as little as 0.016s over Target Competition’s Stefano Comini in today’s qualifying session.

The Italian will start alongside the Swiss on the front row for the first night race in the history of TCR: “The race will be tough for us,” admitted the WestCoast Racing driver. “On a street circuit, races are always special and unpredictable. Racing at night adds another difficulty, of course, as what you see may be quite different from usual, because of the shades and changing references.”

The Honda driver went on to describe his qualifying session, which almost handed him pole position, claiming the Civic is not in its best shape: “I couldn’t do much better, I was always at the limit, and sometimes over. The handling of the car is not good.”

Referring to the power advantage SEAT rivals claim Honda have, Morbidelli concluded: “Everybody was saying that our cars were going to be unbeatable on the straight, you see it is not the case.”

WestCoast Racing team-mate Kevin Gleason added: “I’m happy with my result, especially after Q1, which was very difficult for me. I struggled with the car balance, with traffic, with everything… We made a few changes for Q2 and they worked. For the race, it is very difficult to make any plan.”

With Oriola losing the championship lead, Morbidelli actually gains a point from the leader, dropping to a still significant gap of 38 points.