Winning the FIA World Touring Car Championship for a third time was the hardest it got for José María López during his dominant stint in the WTCC.
López is taking on FIA Formula E for his next motorsport challenge in 2017 on the back of a gruelling WTCC season with the factory Citroën team.
Although he topped the final WTCC standings by 124 points, López won the title the hard way, as he explained during the FIA Champions’ Press Conference in Vienna earlier this month.
“This year was the most difficult one” said the Argentine. “The competition was working very hard. The drivers were racing in a different way than before because they know you and we had the ballast. When we had 80 kilograms [of success ballast] in Paul Ricard we said this is going to be very tough. But again the team made progress in the winter, we fought back and had a very competitive car, even in situations when we thought we were not going to be that competitive. We had the pace in qualifying and being able to win the Main Races was the key to this last championship. It was special and very enjoyable.”
Asked what he will miss about competing in the WTCC, López said: “I will miss a lot the friction in the races especially. You can fight a bit more in a touring car but in a formula car it’s over if you touch someone. In the WTCC it’s not over. It’s very intense because it’s a very short race and also every single moment on the track is very important so it’s very important to do a good qualifying, it’s very important to be good in the traffic because we have a reverse grid [race] and you need to preserve the car.
“There are many things I’m going to miss but for the moment it’s a ‘see you later’. There are a few things I would like to do in the future and I think there will be doors ready for me when I return.”