The Japanese round of the FIA World Touring Car Championship, held at the legendary Suzuka circuit, saw a brilliant return to form for the LADA Sport LUKOIL team – which is back in the fight for the points again. James Thompson finished sixth in Race 1: a result that allowed him to make up a place in the drivers’ championship. With two rounds to go, the Englishman is currently 14th overall.
In Race 2 at Suzuka, the two-time British Touring Car champion started 12th and soon made his way up to ninth. He nearly finished the race in that position but on the final corner he was hit from behind by Marc Basseng’s Seat and lost his place, ending up back in 12th. The stewards penalised the German driver with a 30-second penalty, meaning that James was eventually classified 11th.
His LADA team mate Mikhail Kozlovskiy was also highly impressive in Race 1, having managed to climb his way up from 22nd to 15th place. In Race 2 the Russian driver was hit with a drive-through penalty for jumping the start. In the end, Mikhail was 19th.
Suzuka also proved to be memorable for plenty of racing incidents, crashes and contact, meaning that the LADA Sport LUKOIL drivers had to show real skill to keep their Granta cars safely in one piece during both races. Just like the previous race in the USA, Suzuka was characterised by high temperatures of nearly 30 degrees centigrade, with significant humidity as well. For the drivers it was a real endurance test, with cockpit temperatures in excess of 60 degrees centigrade.
James Thompson commented: “Race 1 was fantastic: we had very good pace throughout the whole race and the track gave us some overtaking opportunities, so we had a good fight. You always have some really competitive guys in the top 10, so I had to be very defensive throughout the whole race and make sure that I kept the door closed to the drivers behind me, but in the end we managed to do that. We also experienced a few tricky moments, such as when several cars came together in front of me, and it was a tough job to avoid that. I’m definitely happy with the performance of the car, which felt very stable. Race 2 was disappointing though. I’d got up to ninth but just before the finish Marc Basseng, who was behind me, hit me from the back and so I went down to 12th. This really isn’t sporting behaviour at all, and the stewards have already had something to say about that. Now we go to Shanghai, which is a really quick, and we’re all feeling very upbeat for the future.”
Mikhail Kozlovskiy added: “The result of Race 1 doesn’t upset me too much as I managed to make up some positions during the first few laps and it was good experience. We’ve improved the car a lot and it’s definitely become more stable compared to the previous rounds. In Race 2 I jumped the start and got the drive-through penalty. That excluded me from the fight, but up to then it had been a really good battle, with a few bits of contact as well. We learned a lot here and I’m sure that we’ll be using those lessons to change the set-up of our car even more in the future.”
