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Chevrolet beaten to pole position in Monza (13 posts)

Topic tags: Alain Menu, Chevrolet, Gabriele Tarquini, Rob Huff, Seat, Yvan Muller

Viewing post 1 to 13 (13 total posts)

Keith Collantine said 1 year, 2 months ago:

A promising sign for the WTCC season ahead as Gabriele Tarquini put his Seat on pole position in front of the previously dominant Chevrolet.

The Cruzes are lined up behind him: Yvan Muller in front of Rob Huff and Alain Menu. Row three is Rickard Rydell (Chevrolet) and Tom Coronel (BMW).

The top five in qualifying score 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 points respectively so Tarquini is also leading the championship.

Under the new WTCC qualifying system, Tarquini takes pole for race one but pole for race two the top ten is reversed.

Therefore the top five for race two is Norbert Michelisz (BMW), Aleksei Dudukalo (Seat), Alex MacDowell (Chevrolet), Pepe Oriola (Seat) and Coronel.

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Ratboy said 1 year, 2 months ago:

what a complicated Quali system they have, and im glad that RML arent on pole let alone a Chevvy

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robk23 said 1 year, 2 months ago:

I’m pleased that both pole positions didn’t go to Chevrolets, a SEAT and a BMW is a good start to the season. Team Aon were caught up in the red flag so didn’t make it into Q2, Nash ahead of Chilton is probably going to become the norm though.

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MattHT said 1 year, 2 months ago:

Was entertaining enough to watch, even If I’m not a great fan of the qualifying routine for WTCC. The red flag towards the end of Q1 was a bit of a downer too, but glad it’s back, and glad Tarquini’s tactics paid off, though I dare say he’ll have his work cut out keeping that pile of Chevy’s behind him tomorrow! And I love watching anything racing round Monza.

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Ryan Williams said 1 year, 2 months ago:

Should be a good couple of races tomorrow. It will be interesting to see if Tarquini can hold off 4 Chevrolets, who will undoubtably be working together to overhaul the Seat. Good to see MacDowall get 3rd place for Race 2, he’s looked quick all weekend and it’ll be great to see him on a podium in his first WTCC outing. Gutted for the Team Aon guys though, Chilton and Nash got unlucky with the red flag, should’ve been in the Top 12.

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Prisoner Monkeys said 1 year, 2 months ago:

I have to say, I think the WTCC is a bit of a joke.

The opening round of the V8 Supercars championship was the Clipsal 500. It involved two 78-lap races around Adelaide (250km each).

The opening round of the DTM series will be at Hockenheim, and is a 38 lap race (173km).

The opening round of the SuperGT series will be at Okayama, and will take place over 82 laps (300km).

And here we have the opening round of the World Touring Car Championship at Monza. Its format? Two nine-lap races. Just fifty-two kilometres per race. It’s ridiculous – there is hardly any racing to speak of. Most of the drivers will no doubt do more laps in qualifying than they will in the actual race. Auto GP is supposed to be a “support” category for the WTCC, but they run over fourteen laps! GP3 does more racing than the WTCC.

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Keith Collantine said 1 year, 2 months ago:

And here we have the opening round of the World Touring Car Championship at Monza. Its format? Two nine-lap races. Just fifty-two kilometres per race. It’s ridiculous

Couldn’t agree more. Not a format befitting of the title “World Touring Car Championship”.

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robk23 said 1 year, 2 months ago:

The race distance is fine, it’s the circuits that are wrong. Using Grand Prix configurations means the cars spend a lot of time on long straights, on a circuit like Monza it’s just so boring to watch. The real racing happens at the corners but in the WTCC…there just don’t seem to be any? I’d rather see them racing on smaller circuits like the Mugello National configuration.

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Prisoner Monkeys said 1 year, 2 months ago:

Couldn’t agree more. Not a format befitting of the title “World Touring Car Championship”.

I think they should be doing at least twice as many laps per race as they are now. It appears the WTCC is run to the first lap after 50km. It should be the first lap after 100km (18 laps of Monza), and three races should be held over the course of the meeting. Get rid of the silly qualifying with the top ten reversed, as well – if the organisers insist on one qualifying session, then each driver’s two fastest times should be counted. The fastest time decides the grid for Race 1, and the second-fastest time decides the grid for Race 2. The Race 3 grid could be decided by points scored over the weekend, with a second qualifying session that morning for all non-scoring drivers.

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robk23 said 1 year, 2 months ago:

@Prisoner Monkeys The current qualifying system is in place to stop drivers slowing down on purpose in order to get the Race 2 pole. I agree that this system is silly though and I think the grid for Race 2 should be the Race 1 result reversed by a random amount (as per BTCC Race 3). That way there would be no guarantee that slowing down will get pole and it’ll lose drivers points if they did.

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bag0 said 1 year, 2 months ago:

@robk23 Random amount? There is no such thing. If you make rules that uses this unit, noone will compete, because you could contorl the race, in qualy when your fav driver is at the back you reverse the grid, saying this was the random time. This is the same problem with Bernie’s artificial rain on GPs.

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Keith Collantine said 1 year, 2 months ago:

@robk23 The BTCC’s part-random grid is my least favourite thing about a series I’m generally very fond of. I wish they’d scrap it and I’d hate to see other series start using it.

It’s arbitrary and just plain wrong for anything calling itself motorsport.

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Prisoner Monkeys said 1 year, 2 months ago:

That’s why I suggested the grid for the final race be set by the number of points scored over the course of the race meeting (in the event of a tie, the driver with the fastest qualifying lap gets the higher position), with every driver who failed to score getting a second qualifying session to try and better his position. It removes the randomness and rewards consistency, but gives the smaller teams and drivers a second bite at the apple.

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