Fabrizio Giovanardi remains upbeat despite difficult qualifying

Team Mulsanne’s Fabrizio Giovanardi qualified 21st for the first race of the season at Marrakech. The Italian couldn’t extract more from his Alfa Romeo Giulietta TCR, despite a strong showing during wet free practice in the morning.

“We can’t let this result destroy our morale,” said the Italian to TouringCarTimes. “We knew from the start there was a lot of work to do. This morning the car felt quite OK, it looked like we could break into the top ten, but the dry conditions did not suit our car and we had some issues.”

The Italian believes there is still time to improve things, as he will use this afternoon’s race as an opportunity to try different things in terms of set-up on his Alfa Romeo.

“The nature of the track and the struggles we had in qualifying mean we can hardly make up more than a few positions during the first race. We will take the opportunity to turn the car upside down and try to find a solution to our issues. The format of the weekend is a huge help, as we will start from scratch tomorrow, so if we find something that works better we can still turn things round in our favour.”

With team-mate Gianni Morbidelli finishing last, Giovanardi is under no illusion there is a magic recipe to make the Giulietta TCR a race winner come tomorrow.

“I surely don’t expect the changes we will do to turn the car into a front-runner straight away. We will take it step by step and we’ll never give up. Like I always said, we are not here to make up the numbers, we want to be competitive and I want to battle it out up there. I’m sure that with determination and passion we will get there. It won’t be easy, but I love challenges.”