Lopez: It means a lot to me to win the title here at Suzuka

The word to the winners

By Franck Drui

26 October 2014 - 10:23
Lopez: It means a lot to me to win (...)

José María López, winner of Race 1 and 2014 WTCC champion: “How do I feel? It’s a good question… There are so many feelings in my heart at the moment, but for sure, the first thing I want to say is a big ‘thank you’. To my family, my girlfriend and my friends, first of all, for all their support during all these years. To Citroën, my mechanics, but also to every team member and my team-mates. Without them, I wouldn’t be here. Today, despite the pressure, I was feeling relaxed and I really enjoyed driving, I was just happy. Finishing fourth would have been enough to clinch the title, but I still wanted to do a good job, I had a good start in Race 1 and managed to stay ahead of Yvan, then after he had his puncture, I could relax a bit and just tried to avoid stupid mistakes. It means a lot to me to win the title here at Suzuka, where Ayrton Senna, my idol, was crowned F1 Champion twice. If there was a place where I wanted this to happen, it is here. Of course, I can imagine that there are a lot of people happy in Argentina at this moment. It’s the first world title since Fangio. He was the one who made motor racing so popular at home, and it is a big honour for me to be bring a world title to my country and make my countrymen happy.”

Gabriele Tarquini, winner of Race 2: “This was certainly the right place to win! It was a pleasure to win here and to see how much people were pleased with Honda’s success. We were completely disappointed after yesterday’s qualifying and I can assure you that we did not target P10 on purpose. Today, our race pace was good and the strategy was to take a good start, try to pull away in the initial laps to build some margin and then manage that. It worked perfectly and like in Shanghai, we proved our race pace is correct. Now, we have to continue working hard to improve the qualifying performance.”

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