It was ‘a weekend to forget’ for James Nash in the TCR International Series in Georgia, as the Craft-Bamboo Racing driver picked up just ten points from Sunday’s races.
Nash and the team struggled throughout the weekend with a relative lack of pace on their SEAT León TCR cars compared to their rivals.
The driver who ultimately struggled the most was Nash, who missed the top ten in qualifying in part as a result of exceeding the track limits on his best lap, forcing him to try to fight back in the races at the Rustavi International Motorpark.
In the end the Brit could only manage a point-less 13th place in race one, before salvaging something from the weekend with fifth in race two.
“It went wrong first of all in qualifying; we were missing a tenth of a second to get us onto the reverse grid,” said Nash to TouringCars.Net.
“Ultimately our whole team was very slow. We don’t normally qualify in eighth, ninth and 11th – we expect to be in the top five or top eight easily, so we’re struggling.”
The team made set-up changes to the car between qualifying and race one, but wet weather in the opening race of the season made life even more challenging for Nash.
“The wet was horrendous for me and Hugo [Valente] and we still don’t know why that was, although it wasn’t so bad for Pepe [Oriola]. My weekend without the reverse grid was always going to be tough.”
“To get points this weekend was the most important thing. It was a weekend to forget – let’s concentrate on the next one.”
Nash expects to perform better in Bahrain in two weeks’ time, where he finished on the podium in both races.
“I’m a lot more optimistic [for Bahrain] – we know the tow is quite important there from last year, so we’ll be having some discussions around that.
“It’s not a new track for us and it will be for some others, so we are more optimistic, but we need to find the problem we’ve had here this weekend.
“Whether it’s just the track or our set-up, we may not know until after Bahrain, but I’d say we’ve got a serious problem if we go to Bahrain like this.”