No hard feelings for Lada drivers after opening race clash

Lada Sport’s Gabriele Tarquini and Hugo Valente touched in the opening race as the Frenchman was trying to recover from a difficult start and the Italian was making up ground.

Although the two have history of hard fights both on and off the track, there are no hard feelings this time, as Hugo Valente explains: “It was a difficult situation to judge,” admitted the Frenchman to TouringCarTimes. “I have my point of view and he has his own. We were side by side from Turn 3 to Turn 7 and then we got to the hairpin. This track is very large in some places but it’s very narrow there, so there was not enough space for both of us and we made contact.”

Valente admitted he was upset to start with, but speaking to his team-mate he understood his point of view and agreed the accident was unavoidable: “I was angry at him at first because I lost my race and he had no problems, but to be honest there’s no one to blame for that incident. It was always going to happen, nobody wanted to give up. It’s a shame because I had a lot of grass in my front bumper and the temperatures went sky high, so I lost a lot of speed on the straights.”

Tarquini confirmed the reactions, adding that although Valente is his team-mate letting another driver through is not in his DNA: “We were side by side for half the track, and we were in a place where we couldn’t both go through. He was unlucky because he had the outside line. Of course he is disappointed, but it’s only natural. There was no intention to take him out. He said I could have let him through, but this concept is not in my mind, I was on the grass and I couldn’t have gone more on the inside. These things happen.”

Tarquini went on to finish the race in fourth, with Valente collecting no points due to the incident and the subsequent car problems.