Yann Ehrlacher managed to miss out on the major incident at the start, in which his fight with Esteban Guerrieri into the Lisboa corner was the catalyst, and then helped to secure the teams’ title for Cyan Racing with fourth place. The Frenchman says he will do what he can, but fairly, to help his team-mate Thed Björk win the drivers’ title on Sunday.
Ehrlacher had already been asked to help Björk in qualifying, giving his team-mate a slipstream in Q2 which helped Björk secure his first pole position in five years, which today he converted to victory.
Ehrlacher dropped one spot at the start and fell behind title rival Norbert Michelisz, but then was lucky to avoid an incident as the Honda of Esteban Guerrieri dived through the pair of them at Lisboa, with Ehrlacher able to get back ahead while Guerrieri rejoined straight into team-mate Marco Butti, causing a pile-up.
“At the end of the day, I have no problem with him, he did what he had to do, he had no option other than to attack, I’m just disappointed he thought I was such an early braker than he could do this,” joked Ehrlacher.
“When I saw he was coming I left the door open and just tried to avoid him and do the switchback and not lose too many positions.
“My problem was at the start I had a lot of wheelspin, so there was nothing I could do. Then at the restart they swapped and there was nothing I could.
“Mathematically I can win it, but realistically Thed can win it, so I’m there as a spare just in case - we won’t be doing anything crazy, it’s not the policy of Cyan Racing or Lynk &Co, we want to win the championship in a fair way, and if I can assist him I will, but we will not do anything stupid and create any disgrace to our reputation.”
