After suffering a difficult start to its 2016 French Rallycross Championship campaign, Pailler Competition fought back at Faleyras to show its rivals that they were the team to beat.
The teams two drivers, brothers Fabien and Jonathan Pailler, showed that their Peugeot 208 RX Supercars had front running pace by dominating the opening days action in heats one and two. Jonathon took his Peugeot to the fastest time in heat one and followed that up with another competitive time in heat two, despite suffering mechanical issues, whilst Fabien made sure that he was quick enough to confirm a one – two finish at the end of day one in the overall standings.
With Jonathan out for the rest of the event, the challenge for top honours fell to Fabien who duly stepped up and qualified fast enough in the two remaining heats on Sunday to confirm himself a place in the Semi-Finals. Showing that the pace of the Pailler Competition Peugeot had no sign of slowing down, Fabien kept up his pace to win the Semi-Final race and guarantee a spot on the Front row in the Supercar Final. However all of his weekend’s hard work came to an early end after contact with another car caused damage to the Peugeot and he retired from the Final.
Despite his retirement, Fabien Pailler was upbeat about his performance during the event, “During the weekend, we knew how to adapt our setup to the evolution of the track. I felt in my element at the wheel of the Peugeot 208 and I knew that we still had a good flexibility in qualifying. We had good speed this weekend and at a circuit as demanding as Faleyras, this is a good thing for the rest of our program, after what has been a difficult start to our championship. This proves that the performance is there, and we had the means to get a win today before contact with a competitor ended my chances of a win at the exit of Turn 1″
Jonathan Pailler is positive about his performance despite mechanical issues ending his weekend early, “Unfortunately, mechanical issues in Q2 continued into the last two qualifying sessions, and I was not able to defend my chances as I would have wished. This is all the more frustrating as we found the source of these troubles just before the Semi-Finals, but we ran out of time to fix the issue,” explained Pailler. “However, this weekend we were able to show how we could be in the game for the win. Now what we need is the success to deliver our efficiency by taking that first win. My motivation is even stronger than we are certain to have a fast car to aim for the top step of the podium on each round of the championship”