Honda showed significant improvement

"We found new ways to improve our competitiveness"

By Franck Drui

8 August 2014 - 12:03
Honda showed significant improvement

Following the test that took place in Valencia in July, the Honda Civic cars have further reduced the gap from the Citroën cars.

Throughout the event in Argentina, the four Honda drivers were consistently among the fastest in the field. This was especially true in Friday’s test (Gabriele Tarquini, third, 0.089 seconds behind the leader) and Saturday’s practices (Mehdi Bennani, third with a gap of four tenths in P1; Tarquini fifth in P2, two tenths behind).

These promises were partially disappointed in the qualifying session, when Norbert Michelisz was the only Honda driver to reach Q3. The Hungarian was then able to claim a brilliant second position in the first race. “I’m really happy with this result. I made the positions up at the start and was comfortable all race in second position. Only in the last laps did Muller come back at me but the gap was big enough for me to take second place as my best result so far this season and gain more championship points,” he said.

Alessandro Mariani, Managing Director of JAS Motorsport commented: “After the Valencia test we found new ways to improve our competitiveness and this has been evident in Argentina. However, as the Team Principal, I am frustrated at not achieving better final results, but we learned a lot using the latest evolutions in racing conditions and that is encouraging for the future.”

Daisuke Horiuchi, Large Project Leader for WTCC development at Honda R & D echoed: “I am happy as the car showed overall improvement in both the chassis and engine; our continuous development of the engine mapping is now paying off and we are closer to the competition compared to Spa.”

WTCR

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