Following on from his victory last time out at Autodrom Most, Norbert Michelisz has continued that rich vein of form so far this weekend at Circuit Pau-Arnos, qualifying third for Sunday’s FIA World Touring Car Cup main race.
Naturally, it would always have been in Hyundai’s game plan to keep that momentum going here in France, and although pole position narrowly escaped them, Michelisz remains optimistic about what the event might hold for him.
“Yeah, the target to be honest was to be here,” he said. “If you are in Q3 the target then is always to get pole, but I’m not sure we could have done this because the lap of Yvan [Muller] was very impressive.
“So I had of course a small, small margin but not enough to be on pole today. But anyway, happy for the team and congrats to Yvan because it was a very nice effort. And in the end starting from P3 I still have all the possibilities, even to get a race win tomorrow.
“So in the end I’m confident with our long-run pace. Of course the races won’t be easy because it’s a particular circuit. But in the end I’m happy with what happened today, happy with the points we scored and very happy with the baseline we set for tomorrow.”
One advantage that Hyundai has going into the race is the proximity of their cars. Jean-Karl Vernay will be starting in second place, just ahead of Michelisz, meaning that the pair can potentially work together to move forward. Muller, meanwhile, will have to fend them off on his own.
That said, Michelisz would simply rather have the advantage in track position.
“If you had the choice you always want to start on pole position,” he reiterated. “In the end we have some tools, but if Yvan has a good start it’s a very limited possibility to play a game behind him and to take advantage.
“He has the experience how to go for this, I’m not really looking forward to any kind of things related to this. In the end it’s beneficial [having Vernay with him], but also we need to take care not to take each other out because in the end you can see Turn 1 and Turn 2 and also Turn 3 is very tight.
“Even though you are careful you can be caught up in a mess. That’s something we need to avoid tomorrow. That’s the main target and then to exploit what we have during the race. Like I said I’m quite confident with what we have, so let’s try to take advantage of that.”
Race one gets underway early on Sunday morning at 10:00 CEST (09:00 BST), while race two comes a couple of hours later at 12:00 CEST (11:00 BST).