Honda spent four days in Barcelona

The Castrol Honda Team successfully carried out the second test session with the new Civic WTCC, at Montmelo’s Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya from Tuesday to Friday.

The weather was sunny and bright, with warm temperatures for the four days. Gabriele Tarquini drove on the first three days and Tiago Monteiro took over today.

Daisuke Horiuchi, Project Leader Engine Development at Honda R&D said: “We are pleased because this track session confirmed the data we had found during our testing at the bench and enabled us to identify some areas that can be further developed by testing on the bench again. I’m especially thinking about the software for the engine management.”

JAS Motorsport Chief Designer Andrea Adamo added: “Thanks to the nice weather we were able to complete a few long runs over the race distance that were especially interesting for learning how to manage the tyres. On top of this, the warm temperatures of air and tarmac gave us valuable figures for the cooling of the car and the tyres.”

Team Principal Alessandro Mariani concluded: “I am very proud of the whole team. Everybody has worked very hard in the last couple of months. And this made possible to build the new car and run two test sessions so early without reporting any major technical issues and improving the performance consistently. It was a tough challenge!”