Honda within one second from Citroen in testing at the Slovakiaring

Today’s test session at the Slovakiaring took place on a dry track, after the rain fallen in the morning, but in a very humid atmosphere. This did not prevent lap times to go down 3.5 seconds from last year.Championship leader José María López (Citroën) set the pace from the beginning and improved his initial best time to conclude the session at the top of the time sheets with a time of 2.05.208.

In the course of the 30-minute session, the Honda cars improved progressively to take second and third-fastest, with Tiago Monteiro and Mehdi Bennani, with gaps below the second (891 and 916 thousandths, respectively).Yvan Muller (Citroën) was fourth and Gabriele Tarquini (Honda) fifth.

Among TC2 cars, Frank Engstler (BMW) was fastest, with a time of 2.134.506, beating Petr Fulín (SEAT) on his reappearance in the series, John Filippi (SEAT) and Pasquale Di Sabatino (BMW). There were no particular incidents during the session, although a few drivers (including Muller, Fulín, Michelisz, Tarquini, Filippi and Loeb) had slight off-tracks with no consequence.

José María López: “It was a good working session, I felt happy with how the car felt, although we can still improve it. I like the track, very technical.”

Tiago Monteiro: “Second position is not bad but the gap with respect to the Citroën cars is still important, although it is true I did a small mistake in my fastest lap. We still have things to improve in the set-up of the car but we know in which direction to work.”

Rob Huff: “The car has improved following the tests at Hungaroring after the race, but we are still struggling for power.”

Cars’ running weights do not change

The weights of the different model cars do not change for the fourth race meeting of the season that takes place this weekend at the Slovakia Ring. The Compensation Weight system came into force last week at the Hungaroring, taking into account the laps times set in the qualifying and races at Marrakech and Le Castellet.

From now onwards, the calculation is based on the lap times set in the three previous events and according to the average between Morocco, France and Hungary, all cars will run at the Slovakia Ring with the same weight they had at the Hungaroring.

The Citroën C-Elysée remains the reference model and receives the maximum compensation weight of 60 kg in addition to the minimum weight of 1100 kg. The Honda Civic, Chevrolet RML Cruze and LADA Granta cars keep on running with no compensation weight added.

WTCC