Honda boys eyeing podium glory in Argentina

The three Honda factory drivers had mixed fortunes in qualifying at Termas de Río Hondo, Argentina. Norbert Michelisz made it to Q3 and took a promising front row spot for the main race, while both Rob Huff and Tiago Monteiro narrowly missed out on the final shootout for pole position.

Michelisz welcomed an unexpected result: “I’m delighted because I honestly didn’t expect that I could be on the front row at this circuit,” said the Hungarian. “In Q3 it was very close, but it seemed that – just like in Portugal – the drivers who made the least mistakes on their flying lap were going to be the drivers that benefitted the most.”

Looking back on last year, the Honda driver is proud of the progress made on the Civic TC1: “I’m also really pleased because last year, with a similar amount of compensation weight, we were about a second off the pace and now we’re so much closer, so I have to thank the team for the fantastic work they’ve done all year on the Civic. A podium tomorrow is the very least I’ll be aiming for.”

After encountering some traffic in his fast lap in the second segment of qualifying, Rob Huff missed out on Q3 by half a tenth, which he finds frustrating as he knew he had the pace to do more than sixth: “While I’m very happy with the team performance to win MAC3, I’m quite disappointed with the result in qualifying,” admitted the Brit. “I know I had the pace in the Civic to at least match Norbi’s front-row spot, but unfortunately I caught traffic on my fastest lap right at the end of Q2, meaning I ended up missing Q3 by just five hundredths of a second or so. I start sixth for the Main Race and fifth for the Opening Race, so there should, at least, be some good points on offer tomorrow.”

Tiago Monteiro seemed to be a little less comfortable than his team-mates at Termas, although the small gaps meant a tiny performance difference left the Portuguese driver down to eighth place: “It was a strange session in that there were no mistakes and no issues with the car, but we just weren’t quite fast enough in what was an incredibly close fight. There were a couple of cars with no compensation weight that were very fast, and that we wouldn’t normally expect to be up at the front, so that just increased the competition a bit.”

The reversed grid means the Portuguese driver can try to make the most out of the opening race: “In Q2, despite only being a tenth off the Q3 places, I was eighth. The real positive is that from third on the Opening Race grid, we should have the pace to win, or at least be on the podium.”

Monteiro is still second in the championship, but Citroën’s José María López extended his lead by a further five points as he scored pole position.