WTCC MAC3 REPORT: FIA WTCC Race of Argentina, 14-16 July 2017
FIA World Touring Car Championship 2017, Rounds 11 and 12 of 20

*More Manufacturers Against the Clock cheer for top trio
*Girolami receives praise for tireless contribution
*Michgiami turbo boost issue hits Honda hopes

Thed Björk, Nicky Catsburg and Néstor Girolami combined to give Team Volvo Polestar its fifth Manufacturers Against the Clock victory of 2017 to claim 12 more points in its bid to win the FIA World Touring Car Championship for makes.

In the Tour de France-inspired time trial, they beat the Team Honda line-up of Norbert Michelisz, Ryo Michigami and Tiago Monteiro over two laps of the the 4.806-kilometre Circuito Termas de Río Hondo although a turbo boost issue for Michigami meant it wasn’t the usual close fight.

Afterwards, Alexander Murdzevski Schedvin, Head of Motorsport at Polestar, singled out home hero Girolami for particular praise.

“In motorsport the closest you can come to a team effort is really the MAC3 concept and it started with a lot of hard work in the Free Practice sessions,” he said. “That led to our pole position and MAC3 win. Bebu [Girolami] is our secret weapon on this track doing a lot of additional work, which is not so evident because everybody is looking at his result alone. But he’s doing a great job for the team as you can see from the job we’ve done today. We’re really happy about the promise of the team and to do well on this track.”

Ryuchi Furukawa, Large Project Leader WTCC Development, Honda R&D, said: “We’ve shown very strong pace in qualifying with Norbi and Tiago, although we aimed for a one-two. Ryo has also been strong too. He does not know the circuit and lost a lot of track time in practice and qualifying, so his Q1 lap especially was very strong. We changed his engine after FP2 because of an oil-feed issue and then had a boost-pressure issue in qualifying, which we thought we’d fixed in Q1, but which returned for Q2 and MAC3 unfortunately.”