Rob Huff – 1st fastest: “I love this place – it’s fantastic! I come to Macau every year with no expectations. I’ve had more wins here than anyone else but Macau is Macau. I have a great respect for the track and I think that has to be priority number one. It’s a track where you can’t make any mistakes at all and that’s why I love street circuits. With this track, it takes years and years to learn all the nooks and crannies and where you can gain the extra tenth or two. I have to say that when you consider the values of the cars in TCR, it’s incredible. As far as the championship goes, Marcello Lotti is in charge and so you know it’s always going to be good. Everything seems nice and relaxed so far!”
Pepe Oriola, 2nd fastest: “The session was good, but we couldn’t show our pace. I’m a little bit frustrated because there are some slow drivers who don’t watch their mirrors and I was blocked two or three times when I was on a fast lap. I am quite far behind Huff, but my race is with Comini and I’m ahead of him so I’m happy. Hopefully I can get some clean laps in FP2 tomorrow to show my real pace. I think Qualifying will be really important. We’ve seen all year how hard these cars are to overtake and here there are only two or three places to overtake. Qualifying will be early in the morning, so the track will be dirty and quite slippery and so getting heat into the tyres may be quite difficult. As long as I am in front of Comini, I know I can win.”
Stefano Comini, 3rd fastest: “It’s an incredible circuit and my feeling with it isn’t as bad as I’d expected. When I saw on the TCR website that there was no reverse grid here, I knew that I would need even more courage than usual. I have no strategy here – I just need courage and heart. The fact that Pepe has lots of experience of Macau is a gap between us. If you look at the time, I am one second behind him and four seconds behind Rob Huff. It’s a big gap, but it’s quite normal for a newcomer to Macau. The feeling in the car is not so good – we have to work on it and I have to work on myself. Only thirty minutes isn’t enough to learn the circuit, but I hope I will be fast by the time we get to Race 1.”
