Gabriele Tarquini: “We’ve had different targets”
Gabriele Tarquini admits that he has been forced to look at “different targets” after a difficult campaign in the World Touring Car Cup.
The BRC Racing team driver heads into the season finale at Motorland Aragon this weekend sitting down in 13th place in the standings after a tough year for the Hyundai drivers on track.
Although he has taken two podium finishes, the Italian has also failed to score on four occasions, and also missed the Nurburging meeting after the two Hyundai customer teams elected not to race citing a lack of ‘equal treatment’ in the series.
That followed a row of ECU exemptions given to some cars on the grid, with Hyundai having also been critical of BOP during the season opener at Zolder.
Despite being on track for the lowest championship placing of his career at world level, Tarquini admitted that he was still enjoying competing this year even if he was having to take a different approach to his racing.
“It’s sure that I still enjoy it, even if the results are not like the past two seasons,” he said. “Racing in these conditions means different targets. We’re not focused on the championship title fight but my targets are the single races where you can push a little bit more than usual in terms of overtaking and in terms of fighting with others. For sure the motivation is still there and I enjoy the races.”
Whilst a championship bid hasn’t been possible this season, Tarquini admitted that Hyundai had been able to gain valuable knowledge to take into 2021 – most notably around race starts, where the i30 N drivers have struggled in the truncated season.
“For me this year it’s more complicated because sometimes our standing start is not perfect,” he said. “Watching the latest start from Norbi in Spain, but also my start in Hungary, it wasn’t really good so I think we need to improve on this area.
“Now it’s too late to react for the last race of the season but with next year in mind, especially as we need to change some parameters on the ECU, we have to use the experience we have from this short season and improve our system.”
