Frustrated James Nash promises to bounce back after Russia

James Nash had provisionally taken the championship lead, before the stewards handed the Craft-Bamboo driver a penalty for an incident with Leopard Racing’s Jean-Karl Vernay in the first race. Besides the penalty, the Brit claims the Lukoil-backed cars were powerless against the Hondas and the Volkswagens.

“[It was] a hugely frustrating day,” admitted Nash. “I made good starts in both races but thereafter to be honest it was fairly dull and to cap it all, the stewards later penalised me for what was I thought, a typical touring car racing incident. A win today was unfortunately beyond us and while a podium would have been nice, realistically it was only going to happen because of someone else’s misfortune.”

The illusion of the long straights playing in favour of the SEATs was soon ended, according to the Brit: “Before we arrived at Sochi we had thought that the circuit might offer us an advantage but from as early as Free Practice One I knew we were in trouble. There was nothing this weekend that we could have done about the Hondas and the VW’s were quicker or at least as quick as us everywhere.”

Although he is not sure where the gap came from, Nash is adamant the team will need to work hard to bounce back from the struggles in Russia: “How much of that is down to others making a real gain on us, or from weight or performance breaks from the organisers I don’t know. What I do know though is that we have got some serious development work to do before the next event so I’m glad that with the eight-week break just starting, we’ve now got the time to do it. It’s been a frustrating day for all concerned but be assured we’ll bounce back.”