Present:
José María López, Citroën Total WTCC, first position
Nicky Catsburg, LADA Sport Rosneft, second position
Yvan Muller, Citroën Total WTCC, third position
Mehdi Bennani, Sébastien Loeb Racing, first position, WTCC Trophy

Q:
Turning first to José and your seventh DHL Pole Position Award of 2016 and the 21stof your WTCC career. Please talk us through how you achieved yet another sensational lap?

JML:
First I will start with congratulating the team for winning its third consecutive championship. I am very lucky, we are very lucky [turning to Yvan Muller] to be part of this team. We have learned a lot from them and for sure it’s much easier for us when you jump into the best car on the grid. We are going to miss them a lot and I’m very happy we achieved this result during a very difficult year with a heavier car. Regarding my qually, in Q3 I wouldn’t say I was relaxed but I had a good margin. But you always fear you gave everything too soon and the others will come back to you. It was a little bit what happened with Nicky. He put out a very good lap in Q3 and made the thing much more exciting and much more complicated. I knew it was going to be close and my Q2 lap was what I had. But sometimes one of the good things of being first after Q2 is you have the advantage to see what the others did and know if you really have to go for more or maybe if you are lucky enough manage with what you have. But that was not the case today and I had to do my best and I’m sorry for Nicky. It was a good lap but an important pole for me and the team. We put again three cars in Q3. It’s always easy to do the calculations but Nicky was already very quick last season so already we were expecting him and LADA to be very close but we were a bit surprised that our main constructor rival Honda was a bit on the wrong foot let’s say for the qually. For the rest I am very happy but it’s still a difficult day tomorrow. We will try to do our best and see what happens. But it was a good day.

Q:
A very good day and thank you very much José. Now turning to Nicky Catsburg, third in qualifying last year and now second today. But, as José said, he felt a bit sorry for you that you were not on the DHL pole today. How do you feel, was second a good result or should it have been first?

NC:
This was the first time in the WTCC that I was disappointed with P2. I felt for a time this was going to be pole but unfortunately Pechito beat me. But if I had to be beaten by one guy I guess it would be him. It’s unfortunate but it’s the front row and I am very pleased with that. I would like to congratulate Citroën as well, winning both the championships again next year.

Q:
Before the event your team-mate Hugo Valente spoke about the lack of success ballast would boost LADA here. But was it down to more than that, was there a secret behind this result?

NC:
In the end Hugo was right. We had 50 kilos less than during the last few weekends and this explains the jump we made. To be honest I expected a bit more. We were struggling in the practices but in qualifying we are usually quite okay. I am a bit worried for the races tomorrow but let’s see. I am going to try my best and hopefully we have some good starts and I can fight with the Citroën boys.

Q:
Thank you Nicky and now turning to Yvan Muller, the four-time world champion and soon to be departing the WTCC following your announcement on Thursday. You do so with a huge amount of success behind you but your focus today wasn’t on the future but your performance in qualifying. How did it go from your perspective?

YM:
Qualifying did not go very well at the beginning because I was not very happy with my car after the first run in Q1. But step by step we resolve or reduce the problem and in Q3 we were able to do quite a good lap, unfortunately not good enough but fast enough to be on the second row on the inside line. Of course it’s not the line I was expecting but for me it’s not too bad.

Q:
Your team boss Yves Matton mentioned the success you have brought to the project since you joined the team. Citroën has now won a second manufacturers’ championship but please just explain some of the work that goes on behind the scenes to achieve this success?

YM:
The pole positions, the victories, the championship victories, is just a fact of the work that has been done before. Citroën since almost four years, like Yves said the car was running on track nine months before the first race. So that was a big job one and a half years before the first event. Then Citroën has the capacity to improve. They were open to all the comments, all the ideas, the experience I could bring them. When you work with a company like this, things are made easy because I didn’t have to force or push for anything. They had the capacity to learn, quickly, and do the job properly. But I would say Citroën without me would do the job as well, maybe it would take more time but with the capacity they have they would reach the same target at some point.

Q:
Thank you Yvan and now turning to Mehdi Bennani. One more point closer to the WTCC Trophy title but it was a bit of a disappointing afternoon, not qualifying of course, but WTCC MAC3. Can you explain what happened?

MB:
For sure it was not a good thing to finish the MAC3 like this and I am so sorry for Citroën but I didn’t expect to have this sensor problem with my throttle pedal. When I see that I was really disappointed. I try to reset it and resolve the problem but it was not possible. But in the end we could keep our good performance in qualifying. It was very nice to drive this car and try to be close with the factory drivers and learn race by race. It’s a good step for sure and it’s nice to have one more point in this category because it’s a big fight with me and Tom [Chilton]. We know we are every time to each other. We have the same car and the same team so we have everything, the same material. It’s very close but hope to bring this trophy home. It is also what he is hoping. I hope the best for him but a little bit more for me.

*Citroën is the provisional FIA World Touring Car Manufacturers champion for 2016 subject to official FIA confirmation. This is because the WTCC promoter, Eurosport Events, has made a request to the FIA Touring Car Commission to cancel WTCC Race of Thailand, which will mean the championship will run over 11 events rather than 12, subject to final ratification by the FIA World Motor Sport Council.