Rally / 24 March 2013

HONDA CIVICS SUPERB 4TH & 5TH IN WET WTCC DEBUT RACE

The Castrol Honda World Touring Car Team secured a superb debut result in the WTCC with Gabriele Tarquini driving superbly in difficult conditions to bring his Civic WTCC home safely in 4th place whilst Tiago Monteiro showed superb skills to move right through the field from 15th on the grid to a strong 5th place overall at the end of the 12 laps of race 1 here at Monza, Italy.  

?It was so hard to see in these conditions at the start it was important to keep the car on the track,? said a delighted Monteiro in front of the cheering Castrol Honda team members. ?I was up to 8th place after 5 laps and just concentrated on my driving and I gained more places as the race ran out. It was a great performance with the Civic on its first race.?  

Tarquini used all his Monza experience to deliver the excellent debut result for the Honda Civic WTCC. From the 10th position on the grid and the rolling start behind the safety car, Gabriele challenged immediately to move quickly up to 7th place on lap 3. He was up to 6th on lap 6 when the safety car came out again and the field bunched up for the final dash to the line. Tarquini passed the Chevrolet of James Nash to take 5th and took another place with a passing move on Marc Basseng out of the Lesmo corner to finish this inaugural WTCC race in an impressive 4th overall.  

?The conditions were very bad on all parts of the circuit but I made no mistakes and that shows in the result. I am very happy for the whole JAS and Honda R & D team who have worked so hard all winter to make this result come true. I think we will have a good season with the Civic,? said the happy Italian who has been a winner every year since the WTCC was launched in 2005.

Team Principal Alessandro Mariani was equally pleased with the result. ?Now we have started the season we know what we have to do. The rain made this more tough but we have showed that the Civic can perform in super wet conditions. There are many more races to run yet but I?m pretty happy at this moment.?  

Andrea Adamo, the engineering chief of the team was also smiling but said, ?It?s good to have the first result but I am here to win!? 

More: www.fiawtcc.com