Mikel Azcona says it was the ‘hardest weekend of the season’ for the Spaniard in the TCR Europe series at Assen, even though the CUPRA driver remains within title contention.
Azcona lost the lead of the championship in Saturday’s first race, where he was only able to take ninth, after losing two places during the race.
The 22-year-old believed that Sunday would be even harder to stay at the front, after he started the reverse-grid race from third on the grid and moved into second when Stian Paulsen let his fellow CUPRA driver through.
Instead Azcona held on to claim second behind Attila Tassi – his fourth podium of the season – and leave The Netherlands just two points behind new series leader Dušan Borković.
“Yesterday was a disaster for me, but now after the second race I am very happy,” said Azcona to TouringCars.Net. “We know that this weekend at Assen we didn’t have the pace or the car to attack the Hyundais and the Hondas, so to be in second position in the second race was a fantastic result for us.
“The feeling in the race was better than I thought it would be. The Honda is superior, and I saw during the race that in the first two sectors of the lap he [Tassi] was faster than me – in long corners where you need to go full throttle earlier he could go earlier and he had more traction. I could not keep with him.”
Prior to Assen, Azcona had always demonstrated his pace in the first race of the weekend, whereas in Assen the PCR Sport driver relied on the reverse-grid race to secure the majority of his points.
“It has been the hardest weekend of the season and I could not imagine to be second yesterday. I had gone back to the hotel thinking ‘tomorrow’s race is going to be a really hard race’ and in the end second is like a win, for sure.
“I am very happy but now I have dropped to second in the championship; we are battling for a championship and we hope to win it.”