After the highs of making the Semi-Final Stages of the World RX of Spain, former British Rally Champion Guy Wilks had a more difficult weekend at the 2017 World RX of Portugal.
The event began well as Wilks guided his LOCO Energy World RX Team Volkswagen Polo to tenth place in Q1, however he was delayed in Q2 and this left him in fourteenth place overnight.
Wilks explains the issues he had to face in the second day of Qualifying.
“The weekend started quite well but in Q2 it just all went wrong, I just got absolutely stuffed with dust, there was nothing I could do about it,” said Wilks. “I won my heat race in Q3 and I thought there may still be a chance of getting to the semi-final, but Q4 was hard.”
“It all just went wrong and there wasn’t anything I could do once I got stuck behind the other cars.”
During Q3, Wilks would set the eleventh fastest time before going on to finish Q4 in seventeenth place. This meant that the British driver finished the event in sixteenth place overall and missing out on a spot in the Semi-Finals.
Despite this setback, the Durham driver has impressed with his speed as he settles in as the only full time British driver in the 2017 FIA World Rallycross Championship and takes the positives ahead of the World RX of Hockeheim.
“It’s one of those things, this is the World Championship and it was never going to be that easy. We’ve had a few problems here and there but once again the team has worked tirelessly all weekend and have done a fantastic job,” Wilks explained.
“We’ve got new parts coming for Germany and we’ll be back out fighting. This may have been a tough weekend but we need to just press on and come back stronger. It’s only two weeks until the next round where it will be onwards and upwards.”