Rob Huff led Kevin Gleason to a WestCoast Racing front row lockout for the Suncity Group Macau Guia Race 2.0T and the final round of the 2015 TCR International Series (Saturday 21 November).
As you would expect of a seven-time Macau Grand Prix winner, Huff deftly threaded his WestCoast Racing Honda Civic TCR between the Circuito da Guia’s barriers to top the timesheets with a seemingly indomitable margin over the rest of the field in both free practice sessions.
The former World Champion, making his TCR International Series debut, was very satisfied with his Honda’s handling and performance from the outset of the four-day event and reinforced his ‘Master of Macau’ status by clinching pole position with an astonishing lap of 2m31.522s.
Significant gains were made by Macau rookie Gleason throughout free practice. The 28-year old American was tentative to begin with and he quickly came to understand why the Guia circuit has such an infamous reputation, but he ran strongly despite his lack of experience and significantly reduced his pace deficit to teammate and mentor Huff.
In fact the student would lead the master for a time, as Gleason went fastest overall in the first 20-minute phase of qualifying on Saturday (21 November), which was affected by a single red flag stoppage when Sunny Wong span and his WestCoast Racing Honda was collected by Frank Yu’s SEAT.
However, Huff returned to the top in the second element of qualifying, which determines the top 12 grid positions, but Gleason set a best time of 1m33.153s to see off TCR International title contender Stefano Comini and make it a WestCoast Racing front row lockout, while experienced Italian Gianni Morbidelli rounded out the top six after spinning and causing another stoppage in Q2.
“WestCoast Racing, JAS Motorsport and I did a good job together and I’m delighted to be working with such a professional bunch of people,” said Huff. “It’s never easy to jump into a new championship in the last race, not knowing the car and the team, but progress has been really good throughout the sessions. The race itself will be a different story, as there are a number of no certainties, but the car has a nice balance and is easy to drive, so I’m happy.
“I didn’t push in Q1 and I knew there was a lot of time to come from the car. I pushed on the first run in the second part of qualifying and set a time that was good enough for pole position, knowing there was still more to extract, so I went again with fresh front tyres and improved further. I was hoping that was good enough for pole, but I decided to go for one more but I was distracted by a small problem when shifting down the gears and made an error.”
Gleason added: “I’m really happy with how qualifying went and it’s great to be on the front row on my first outing in Macau. The track is more difficult than I could have ever anticipated and this has been a real learning process. I’ve learnt something in every session, including Q1 where I was able to piece everything together and put in a strong lap. It’s just about getting comfortable with the car on the circuit, finding the braking points and entry speeds and analysing data, but Rob (Huff) has been able to help with the small details of the track and I’ve been able to apply those lessons in each session, which is pretty satisfying.”
For more information on WestCoast Racing, please visit the officialwww.westcoastracing.se website, ‘like’ the team’s Facebook page and follow@WestCoast Racing on Twitter.