René Kircher: “I’m targeting a top five result”

Mertel Motorsport’s René Kircher was satisfied with fifth position in qualifying for the FIA Motorsport Games at Valencia, specially since this is his first event with the Honda Civic FL5 TCR model.

“The qualifying was quite difficult for me, because both the track and the car are new for me, so I’m still trying to get used to them,” Kircher explained to Touring Car Times.

The session took place on a drying track, poising an added challenge to the TCR field.

“It was very wet in the beginning, so we were struggling to get temperature into the tyres,” added the 24-year-old.

“At half session the racing line was almost completely dry, so we could start pushing quite a lot, so we were improving the times until the end, and I was P5 in the end.”

“I’m quite happy with the result but I would like to go for the medals, so we have a lot of work to do. My strategy for today is to overtake people at the start and move to the front to have a good starting position for tomorrow.

“It’s nice to compete against guys from another countries and I’m targeting a top five result.”