Latvian driver Reinis Nitiss got his 2016 FIA World Rallycross Championship under way as he début the ALL-INKL.com Münnich Motorsport Seat Ibiza RX.
During the worsening track conditions on Saturday, Nitiss guided his new Supercar to tenth place in Q1 and then followed that up by going twelfth fastest in Q2.
On Sunday, the conditions dried out, allowing the teams to begin to run on slick tyres and experiment with dry setups on the cars. The Latvian driver set the fifteenth quickest time in Q3 and finally seventeenth fastest time in Q4.
This meant that he would miss out on the Semi-Finals and would finish in fifteenth place overall, however Nitiss took positives from the cars first competitive outing, “The weather was completely opposite of what we saw on Saturday, so on Sunday we could race on a dry track – Q4 was finally done on “slick” tires.” said Nitiss.
“This turn of events required a quick reaction in changing the car setup and adapting my driving style, giving us a chance to test the freshly built ALL-INKL.com Münnich Motorsport Seat Ibiza RX in both wet and dry in the same race weekend.
“We gained a lot of very valuable information which will be useful in further updates to the car, so that we can be more competitive next time.”
The Latvian heaped praise on the team as they showed that there is more potential in the brand new SEAT Ibiza Supercar, “For this event, we lacked a bit of speed and experience with the new car, and just missed out on the semi-finals. However, I would like to praise the whole team, as they did a ton of work to make sure that the car could finish each qualifying round without any technical issues.
“None of the qualifying runs were perfect for me in Portugal, I made some mistakes myself and got into contact with some other drivers, which definitely didn’t help my times. I am confident that it is not long we will get to our first semi-final!”
