Teamwork Motorsport continued to push in the SINOPEC LUBRICANTS Chinese Touring Car Championship (CTCC) at the Shanghai International Circuit (SIC) this weekend (24-25 September) scoring solid points over 2 races to remain with an outside chance of the title.
Fighting against a balance of performance adjustment for the C-Elysse this weekend meant that the team knew that it was always going to be an uphill battle to challenge for the podium and the days first race proved to be the case as after a decent qualifying for the drivers Hui and Wong they found it difficult to defend positions on the Shanghai International Circuits’ long and punishing straight. This combined with tyre degradation to contend with left the pair satisfied with P4 for Wong and P11 for Hui after a difficult race.
The team had elected to play safe with the setup of the cars and for race 2 after a long night working through options and strategy a less conservative approach was taken. The result, better power and tyres that would hopefully last the course more consistently. As it was the strategy paid off as starting from P3 (Wong) and P4 (Hui) the cars were much better than the previous day’s race. Unfortunately for Hui especially the race was very combative with many cars fighting for positions and lots of pushing rubbing and touching and both drivers fell back at the start, Wong to P7 and Hui to P11.
Not to be defeated both set about the challenge and Wong, finding the car much more to his liking was able to pick off his opponents one by one as the race progressed to be satisfied with P4. Hui keeping his title alive behind with a good recovery to P7.
Wong said “I think we were pretty much where we thought we would be this weekend. The team did a great job to get the best from the car with the balance of performance we had to live with. Race 2 was very rough and I got pushed by 2 cars one each side into turn 1 and dropped back. From P7 it was a great fun coming back through the field”
