Attila Tassi: “Safety car restart was the key to victory”

Attila Tassi says that his safety car restart was critical to securing his second TCR Europe series victory of the season in Barcelona, a result that keeps him in title contention ahead of Race 2 on Sunday.

The KCMG Honda Civic Type R FK8 TCR driver led from start-to-finish from pole to comfortably beat the Target Competition Hyundai i30 N TCR of Dusan Borkovic, while points leader Mikel Azcona could only manage fifth place.

Tassi is tied on 153 points with Team WRT’s Jean-Karl Vernay in the standings, 24 behind Azcona with 25 remaining in tomorrow’s final race of the year.

The Hungarian made good use of the safety car restart to consolidate his advantage over then second-placed driver, and KCMG team-mate, Josh Files – who ultimately retired due to a delaminated tyre three laps from the end.

“I was very happy with the safety car because the time was ticking and I was asking for one more lap,” an ecstatic Tassi told TouringCarTimes.

“I was thinking about where I should start pushing for the restart and I planned to do it at Turn 12 I guess and nobody expected that. I made a good exit from the chicane which helped me build the gap and close out the race win much easier.

“I had a perfect car since the beginning of the weekend, from FP1, FP2, we built up the progress, we improved every session and we made good choices between myself and my engineer.”

It has been an impressive weekend for Tassi, who topped second practice on Friday before claiming pole position following Saturday morning’s qualifying session.

Tassi admitted that neither he nor his KCMG team had expected to be so competitive versus the lighter Hyundais.

“To be honest, before the weekend we didn’t think we would have a chance because we are 20kg lighter than the Hyundais and everybody nows the Hyundai is almost unbeatable in the race because their tyre wear management is unbelievable,” Tassi said.

“We have good pace in one lap but in the race they are much faster. But it’s good to see that we found the set-up, I wouldn’t say that my tyres were better than before but I could beat them by my performance round the circuit.

“It was very hard as I made a slight mistake on the first lap so I told myself: ‘I cannot make any mistakes’ because they will catch me and overtake me.”