Josh Files rues gearbox issue which cost him “potential pole”

M1RA’s Josh Files made a significant set-up change between practice and qualifying, which the TCR Germany series champion believes had transformed the car, but puts a developing gearbox issue as the reason why he could qualify no higher than 15th.

The Briton suffered an intermittent gearbox problem during qualifying, which meant he was unable to set a representative time in the 20-minute first segment of qualifying.

“The car was perfect, it was just the gearbox,” said Files to TouringCarTimes.

“The paddle either doesn’t change, or it jerks it into the exit and it won’t change down.

“On my lap when I did a 1:28.4, I couldn’t change four times which cost us half a second, and that would have put us P1 at the time. The car had the pace for pole position, which is really frustrating.

“We’d done a great job to turn the car around after free practice, the car was on rails, but then we let ourselves down with this gearbox issue, as we had the problem a little bit in FP2.”