Matías Rossi brought his machine home in sixth place at San Nicolás for the second round of the Copa de Oro, yet there was no joy to be found in the result. The driver from Del Viso, steering a Toyota prepared by Pradecon Racing, had endured a difficult outing previously in San Luis. Now he has added crucial points to his tally, holding 12th position in the playoff standings with 36 points, and looks ahead to Rosario.
Yet the numbers hide a brutal reality about the machinery underneath him. "It was more than anything a defensive race, trying to hold off Otto (Fritzler) within the legal framework; there was quite a bit of difference between the two cars," explained the 2014 TC champion. "He ends up passing me with a scissor move on the straight and after that I couldn't do much more."
I made very good use of the practice sessions, what we needed to qualify and we positioned ourselves better than the potential we had. Personally I stay satisfied because the car wasn't working.
That limitation on track has sparked real anguish for a competitor so closely tied to his manufacturer. "We are complicated with the performance of the Toyota, we cannot manage to understand the reason," he said. "It gives me sadness and bitterness for the brand, which bets so much on motorsport, as in TC and we are not at that level of competitiveness."
The numbers over a multi-year span make for grim reading, according to the veteran. "It's serious because you want to give good results to the brand, in my case it's a lot of years together with Toyota," Rossi stated. "Of course the performance is bad because in five years we won a single race. For me, the analysis is super bad. Work never lacked, we work very hard, but the performance is not, by a long shot, the one we expect."
Despite the underlying struggles of the car, extracting a sixth-place finish required maximizing every single session available. "From San Nicolás I left super happy because we stayed in a position we weren't supposed to be in," he admitted. "I made very good use of the practice sessions, what we needed to qualify and we positioned ourselves better than the potential we had. Personally I stay satisfied because the car wasn't working."
Looking forward to the remainder of the playoff battle, the path ahead demands answers that the team has not yet found. "If we were more competitive, we have chances to recover," Rossi reflected. "We are going to work as we have been doing and maybe we'll find something that we hadn't realized until now. In San Luis we didn't start well, in San Nicolás we scored strongly and we'll see now in Rosario."
