Tom Chilton believes that a victory for himself in the World Touring Car Championship races at Monza is possible, even though he will start neither race from the front row of the grid.
Chilton qualified his Sébastien Loeb Racing Citroën in seventh for the Main Race, resulting a fourth-place grid spot for the top-ten reversal in the starting order for the Opening Race.
He also qualified comfortably ahead of team-mates Mehdi Bennani and John Filippi, the first time since the Nürburgring in 2016 that Chilton out-performed Bennani.
The Brit pointed to the fact that he has two Chevrolet drivers ahead of him on the Opening Race grid as a reason to be confident, given that he expects the tyres on the Cruzes to wear out quicker than on his C-Elysée.
“A lot can change around Monza,” said Chilton to TouringCars.Net. “I know the Chevrolet very well, so when it gets to six laps the front tyre on that will be going off quite quickly, which presents a good chance for me to overtake.
“I think a win is possible. Mehdi is starting on the front row, and I’m starting on the second row, and our car is good on its tyres, so I’ll be disappointed if we’re not on the podium.
“I’m relatively happy with my performance – it’s not often I can say that I’m half a second faster than Bennani or 1.2 seconds quicker than Filippi – I drove the nuts off it. But we still made a mistake as a team, because we didn’t get the tyres on in time in Q2, so I didn’t get any form of slipstream.”
Chilton added that he believes the high-speed nature of the Monza circuit will have more of an effect on the heavier C-Elysées, with their 50 kg of compensation weight, than at any other track this season.
“We do have weight, which really hurts us on the braking and when accelerating; 50 kg is a lot, it’s nothing to be sniffed at. This circuit is probably the worst one for carrying extra weight, because you’ve got huge stops into very slow-speed corners.
“It takes a lot more metres to stop and then it loses you up the straight because you’re pulling 50 kg of extra weight.
“It’s a bit of a waiting game. We need to let the race come to us and we’ll see how we go, but I’m quite confident for the race.”