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Race preview : Who will be the pass-master in Japan ?

What to expect from the week-end in Motegi

By Emmanuel Touzot

27 August 2016 - 16:57

Points won’t be the only incentive on offer when the all-action FIA World Touring Car Championship season powers back on track at WTCC JVCKENWOOD Race of Japan next week (2-4 September). With overtaking opportunities aplenty at Twin Ring Motegi, the unofficial title of WTCC ‘pass-master’ will be up for grabs at the exciting venue north of capital city Tokyo.

New to the WTCC schedule in 2015, the 4.801-kilometre layout’s tight turns and long straights promote passing in abundance, as 2012 world champion Rob Huff can testify. “It’s not just a fantastic circuit but the best track we go to throughout the year for the racing,” said the Castrol Honda World Touring Car Team driver. “It’s a real racing track with lots of overtaking.”

After making up three positions in the first race at Twin Ring Motegi last season, Huff gained 10 places in the second race to climb from P13 to the final step of the podium in dramatic fashion. And Huff wasn’t alone in pulling off multiple overtakes. Works Honda star Tiago Monteiro made up eight places in race one with Tom Coronel and Stefano D’Aste also moving up the same number of positions in the second race. Tom Chilton and John Filippi were also on the rise in race two, overtaking six and five times respectively.

José María López, vying for a third consecutive World Touring Car title with Citroën Total WTCC, also knows a thing or two about overtaking having charged through from P18 to fifth in the Opening Race in his native Argentina last time out. If he leaves Twin Ring Motegi, where he was a race winner in 2015, with a 110-point advantage, then he’ll be provisional champion for 2016.

Four-time champion Yvan Muller, who completes the works Citroën line-up, was also in passing mode in Argentina, starting seventh and finishing third in the Opening Race. Having yet to register a win in 2016, the Frenchman will by vying to pull off as many overtaking moves as possible, although landing the DHL pole position – claimed in spectacular fashion last year by Honda privateer turned official driver Norbert Michelisz – will make his task a lot more straightforward.

Honda will increase its factory attack on the FIA World Touring Car Championship to four cars with Japanese driver Ryo Michigami joining its line-up for WTCC JVCKENWOOD Race of Japan. Michigami has been part of the Honda Racing family since 1998, while his career highlights include 11 wins, 51 podiums and 11 pole positions in major categories such as the Japanese Touring Car Championship, Super Formula and Super GT. The WTCC races at Twin Ring Motegi will mark Michigami’s debut in the series and will make him the first driver from his homeland to race a TC1 World Touring Car. He will join Rob Huff, Norbert Michelisz and Tiago Monteiro in driving a factory Honda Civic WTCC following a test in one of the Honda Racing Team JAS-run cars at Circuit de Catalunya near Barcelona in July. Fittingly, Twin Ring Motegi is owned by Honda and houses the famous Honda Collection Hall, which contains a number of classic race- and road-going Honda cars and motorbikes.

Néstor Girolami’s pace and perseverance have been rewarded with a drive in a factory Volvo S60 Polestar TC1 at WTCC JVCKENWOOD Race of Japan. The back-to-back Súper TC2000 champion from Argentina will replace Robert Dahlgren in representing the Swedish make alongside Thed Björk. His inclusion in the Polestar Cyan Racing line-up comes after he impressed team chiefs during a specially arranged test at Circuito Termas de Río Hondo recently, and in light of his determination to compete in the fastest pan-continental touring car series. While the agreement is currently for Japan only, the 27-year-old will be eager to impresses sufficiently and secure a long-term WTCC future. Girolami, who narrowly lost the 2013 Súper TC2000 title to double World Touring Car champion José María López, made two appearances in last year’s WTCC, scoring a point on his debut in Slovakia and finishing eighth in Vila Real.

Citroën and Honda will be level-pegging when it comes to the amount of compensation weight they will carry at FIA WTCC JVCKENWOOD Race of Japan. The cars of both makes will carry the maximum permitted 80 kilograms under regulations designed to equalise performance in the World Touring Car Championship through a lap time difference in seconds calculation based on average lap times from the previous three race weekends. Although the Citroën C-Elysée WTCCs have run heavy all season, this is the first time the Honda Civic WTCCs have carried the full 80 kilograms of success ballast. Meanwhile, the three LADA Vestas in action at Twin Ring Motegi will continue to carry 50 kilograms of additional weight, while the Volvo S60 Polestar TC1s remain at the 1100-kilogram minimum base weight. However, the Chevrolet RML Cruze TC1s will run with 10 kilograms of compensation weight having been at zero in Argentina where Tom Coronel and Esteban Guerrieri were on rapid form.

They said what ?

Néstor Girolami (Polestar Cyan Racing): “It’s wonderful to be part of the WTCC again and I am very grateful to Polestar Cyan Racing for this opportunity to race in Japan when I will give all my best to have a great weekend. I shared the Argentina race weekend with the team and I learned a lot about the car before the test. I felt very comfortable during the test, the team worked hard to improve the performance and develop the car, which has great potential. The test was very, very good for me and a good opportunity to show what I can do. I did 30 laps and the conclusions were very good. My goal for Japan is to take this one step further and, above all, demonstrate that I have the speed, engineering skills and race craft to become a part of the team in the future.”

Ryo Michigami (Honda Racing Team JAS): “I had a chance to test the Civic WTCC at Barcelona and was hoping for an opportunity to race it, so I’m very excited that I’ll be able to do this so soon. I was involved in the development of the Civic Type R, which was released last year, and had been watching the Civic WTCC closely as well. I will be racing with my heart and soul at Motegi and putting all my experience to best use. Honda and JAS Motorsport have given me a wonderful opportunity; the car felt consistently fast in Spain and I’ll definitely be well-prepared for the races in Japan.”

Yvan Muller (Citroën Total WTCC): “The fight for the second place of the championship could be interesting, but I don’t really care about it, I’m only interested with first position! My target will be to bring a lot of points to Citroën for the Manufacturers’ championship. I feel that our potential is growing since the last two or three meetings, but I need three perfect sectors in qualifying to catch pole. Motegi is not a very fast track, there are a lot of corners but there are real overtaking opportunities. The search for traction is quite important and the track is hard for tyres. We can expect rain so it won’t be easy but it’s always good to go to Japan because fans are very passionate. This year I will arrive a few days earlier to take some time for visiting with my family.”

Hugo Valente (LADA Sport Rosneft): “I love Japan and I was happy to get on the podium last year because the previous year I was second but I lost the position two laps from the end. Funnily enough Japan last year was my worst weekend in terms of performance but I was making my best result because we were more consistent. Argentina was a frustrating weekend for me with two DNFs. Being the quickest LADA in qualifying was only a very small consolation so I am hoping for a better weekend in Japan when I am confident our pace will improve compared to what we saw in Argentina.”

Tom Coronel (ROAL Motorsport, WTCC Trophy): “I lived in Japan for five years so it’s a kind of coming back home for me. I was the Formula 3 champion, winning my title at Twin Ring Motegi, the Formula Nippon champion and in GT I won two times the All-Star race and was the only Honda driver who won in 2003 at Motegi. It’s the best circuit we have for overtaking and I know we will put on a good show. I said before Morocco, Portugal and Japan would be good for me this year and so far I have come away happy from Morocco and Portugal. I always feel power from coming to Japan and it’s easy when you have the same passion from the fans.”

A lap of the track with Rob Huff

Rob Huff delivered an overtaking masterclass when Twin Ring Motegi hosted the FIA World Touring Car Championship for the first time last season. This is the factory Honda driver’s guide to getting the 4.801-kilometre lap just right. “We go across the line in fourth gear, up to fifth before Turn 1, which along with Turn 2, is treated as one corner effectively. You tend to barrel quite fast into Turn 1, trying to carry the speed through to get as late as possible on the power out of Turn 2 because if you get on the power too early you tend to get understeer and you have to lift on the exit. The run between Turn 2 and Turn 3 is really quite important so you’re taking plenty of speed into Turn 1 to really focus on the exit of Turn 2. Into Turn 3 is quite a good overtaking opportunity, especially if you put the pressure onto somebody in Turn 1 and Turn 2.

You’re really slowing the car down a lot in to Turn 3, down to second gear. Turn 3 is really setting up Turn 4 and the run down to Turn 5. We saw quite a lot of overtaking last year into Turn 3 but also on the exit of Turn 4 and up to Turn 5, one of the slowest corners on the circuit and one of the hardest corners because it’s very flat and very slippery, down to second gear with a lot of understeer. A lot of people dummy into Turn 5 to make people defend in order to get a better exit out of Turn 5 and overlap through Turn 6 and into Turn 7. Getting on the power out of Turn 5 is critical because Turn 6 is flat and if you get a poor exit from Turn 5 you are allowing people the overtaking opportunity into Turn 7 and 8.

Turn 7 is really about setting the car up for Turn 8, carrying as much speed through 7 as possible, being on the power as late as possible because if you get on the power too early into 8, you set the car up into understeer and that causes you a problem on the exit of Turn 8, which opens the door for people into Turn 9. Turn 9 is a very slow corner. When you’re driving it really feels like a 180-degree hairpin. And from Turn 9 to the next three to four corners are really quite slow so again it’s about focusing on the exit as both Turn 10 and 11 provide really good overtaking opportunities. Turns 9 to 11 are all second gear so all traction-limited on the exit and if you can push someone into defending or a small mistake into any of these corners, then you’ve got a good overtaking possibility.

Because of the very steep downhill braking Turn 11 is very unique. Later in the race you will see a lot of people locking up and making mistakes going deep into 11. Although that is probably one of the corners that collects the most mistakes from people, it’s very difficult to overtake into Turns 11-14 because there really is only one line and because it goes from a right to a left, to a left to a right, it’s very difficult to line your car up into a position to give yourself that opportunity. Coming out of 11 you’re downhill and there is a lot of wheelspin on the exit. Last year we had a lot of people getting laps taken away for track limits on the entry to Turn 12 from running all four wheels off the track on the entry to get more speed and less of an angle through 12 and 13.

Turns 13 and 14 probably present the hardest braking zones of any track we go to because you’re turning tight left still from Turn 12. The car is fully pitched over and very unbalanced. We saw a lot of drifting going on into Turn 13 last year and again in Turn 14 where there is a little trick that not many people picked up on last year. That really sets up the speed down the start/finish straight and makes Turn 1 a potential overtaking opportunity as well but I’m keeping that secret to myself!”