Gabriele Tarquini proud of Lada progress

Gabriele Tarquini pulled off a very good defensive drive in the opening race, keeping the faster Citroëns behind to claim fourth. The second heat was less lucky as the Lada Sport driver failed to finish due to an accident, but there are a lot of positives to take from the weekend.

“The opening race was quite good for the first three or four laps, the car was good,” said the Italian. “I had to start defending after that and of course it was stressful, also in terms of performance because I lost touch with the guys at the front and I had to look in the mirrors a lot. Of course I was kind of blocking the Citroëns. It must have been good to watch for sure, but I had to give it everything to defend, I had to use all my experience, knowing their strengths and my weaknesses.

“Of course at one point I had the good idea of slowing down all the pack behind me, because of course there’s a difference between a driver focused on attacking you and a driver who needs to look in his own mirrors at the same time, and it was a good move because it paid off because they switched positions a lot and it guarded my place. I made a mistake at the start and it was a shame, I was not able to modulate the clutch properly.”

Moving on to the main race, a contact with Honda Racing’s Norbert Michelisz brought the Italian’s race to an end: “I was on the outside of Norbert (Michelisz), I had a good start and overtook the Volvo, I was fighting with the Hondas and at Turn 3 he was not kind to me and he pushed me out. I got through the grass and it was not the same after that. I stopped in the pits and it turned out to be a huge chunk of grass blocking the air intake, so the engine was not breathing and of course I had no power.”

Tarquini is very proud of the progress Lada has made: “I am happy to see the first positive results of the work we have done. Nicky (Catsburg) is very nice and he keeps on thanking me even in front of the media, because the car actually improved a lot since last year. I changed everything I could, there are some things which can’t be changed and maybe we don’t even have the resources to do that. There was a huge improvement, especially in the race distance, and Nicky could see that even more than us as he drove the Vesta last year.

He is a very fast driver and did a perfect job in qualifying. Of course the Citroëns are 80 kilos heavier, but we are not here to fight with them because they are in a different league. Obviously nobody can beat them on equal weight, but losing pole position for four hundredths was a satisfaction even for me. There’s a good relationship with everyone, that’s who I am. I try to help the team, I would have been really happy because it is a consequence of my work as well.”

Tarquini went on to explain what he did exactly to turn the Lada Vesta into a serious contender for pole position as seen in yesterday’s qualifying: “The car had a lot of traction problems and understeer. I thought it had a weird setup and it was assembled in a way which was different compared to what I do with a front wheel drive car. It’s been turned upside down compared to last year, there is no setup parameter we did not change, and the results show it was the right way to go. We changed everything we could.”

The Italian admits he made full use of his previous spell at Honda to improve the Russian car: “The first thing I tried to do was to bring my experience from Honda. The path was very clear, I tried to use the same things which worked well on the Civic, so my first approach was to try and see if the Vesta responded in the same way. I saw that it worked similarly and the way was good, I think it also shows in the performances of the Hondas, because that car is my ‘daughter’, and it is very good. I brought that experience to Lada and it now feels similar to the Lada, and the setup is very close to that as well.”

Tarquini has 18 points to his name and is currently eighth in the championship.