Jean-Karl Vernay says that he needed to secure pole position in order to ‘save the weekend’ after being handed a back-of-the-grid engine change penalty for the second FIA World Touring Car Cup (WTCR) race at Zandvoort.
Vernay qualified his Audi RS3 LMS on pole position for Monday’s final race, bagging an extra five points and giving him the best chance of victory in the race which awards the most points.
But with the Leopard Lukoil Team driver set to start the reverse-grid second race from the back, to the WRT outfit changing the engine on his car overnight, Vernay admits that he needed to get pole to give him the best chance of a strong result.
“We needed to get pole position to save the weekend,” said Vernay. “Yesterday we scored some good points with P5 but we had some engine problems and should have done a bit better I think.
“We’re going to start from the back in race two so that was the target – [to get] pole and win race three. At least we did half of the job now.
“It was a really good lap and it felt really good with the car. Q1 was good, Q2 was a little bit more difficult, and [for Q3] I said to just try to do the best job you can, make no mistakes, and just try to stay on the track, and it went well.”
Vernay praised the efforts of his sleep-less mechanics who worked hard to switch the engine on his car overnight.
“I’m really happy, congratulations to my team who changed my engine all night – they didn’t sleep well.
“I told them and all the guys from Audi that we’re going to make pole today and we made it so I’m pretty proud of that.”