After a fabulous 1-2-3 for the VX racing team, we spoke to their drivers:

Yvan Muller – VX Racing – 1st place.

I’m delighted after all the bad luck I had at Mondello Park, especially with this weight penalty. It was a hard first race, but the second race was exciting in a different way. I had to drive very carefully not to make any mistakes, and to manage my tyres. For the last ten laps I was tense, they were the longest ten laps of my life! I was expecting something bad like many times before.


James Thompson – VX Racing – 2nd place.

A hard race for me, I was down in 8th place at one stage so I had quite a bit of work to do. I got knocked around a bit at the start, but I bided my time and worked my way through, right up to 2nd. But it’s tough now, everyone’s so competitive, you just can’t afford any slip ups.

There were some naughty tactics from MG, they let Anthony [Reid] speed in the pitlane, then he held me up behind the safety car. A bit of spoiling tactics but ultimately it didn’t pay off for them!

Did the safety car help you at all?

Not really, it just didn’t bunch the field up. Yvan was coming round Clearways when I was still at Graham Hill. You’re supposed to maintain one car length and they just didn’t do it! That was a bit frustrating because it spoiled what could have been a great race to the finish, but you know, that’s the way it goes.

What was the score with the team orders?

There weren't any team orders: Owy got on the radio and said “Jimmy’s a bit faster, let him through, he’s probably better off having a go at Turkington than me”, so he gentlemanly got out of the way like I did for him in the first race. There’s no point holding anyone up, and we knew that if I could have a go at Colin then he might run wide or whatever, and Paul might nip through too. A good head on young shoulders there. As it transpired, it all worked out.

What actually happened with Colin?

I came down the inside and showed him the nose of the car, and he decided to turn in across the front of it - which he’s entitled to do – but having committed to the inside I had nowhere to go and there was contact. He got sideways but not enough to run off the track, then all of a sudden he just swerved into my car, I think trying to turf me off the track, so I thought that was a bit dangerous. He got his comeuppance, though, it speared him off the track, but you can’t do that sort of thing! Ok, some could argue that I shouldn’t have touched him, but if you know that someone’s coming down the inside then you don’t turn in. To have a go back down the straight I think was a little naïve of him, but it ultimately contributed to his downfall.


Paul O’Neill – VX Racing – 3rd place.

What was the score with the team orders?

James had the lighter car, he was catching [Colin Turkington], I wasn’t making any progress so I don’t have any problem with that. I got the call – it broke my engineer’s heart but I wasn’t bothered because James let me through in the first race. No problem at all, it was good for Vauxhall and it all worked out good in the end.

What was your view of the incident between James and Colin?

I don’t know what you’re on about!! No, all I saw was that James went down the inside, Colin turned in, they touched, Colin ran wide on the grass and must have lost it. He hit James back pretty hard and bent his suspension.



Article text © 2003 www.BTCCinfo.co.uk.