Yvan Muller admits World Touring Car Championship's 2011 qualifying system left him 'stressed' at first
World Touring Car champion Yvan Muller said he allowed himself to become spooked by the series' new qualifying format in early 2011, and that this impaired his form at the start of his title defence
Muller did not win a race until round eight in Hungary, as Chevrolet team-mate Rob Huff built up an initial points advantage. But the 2010 champion fought back with eight wins in the remaining events and managed to retain his crown.
This year the WTCC scrapped its traditional system of reversing the top eight from race one for the race two grid, and instead based the top half of the race two starting order on reversed Q1 top 10 positions, a convoluted method that Muller said niggled at him.
"It was nothing specific but I was not at my normal level," he said. "Maybe it is stupid of me, but this qualifying stressed me a lot and I was very focused on that, probably too focused, and that cost me a lot of energy and time on my car.
"I took at least three races to start to take this off my mind, but still not totally because here [in Macau] it was still on my mind.
"There was also a bit of stress because my engineer and I, we put too much pressure on ourselves and that cost us a bit of time.
"Step by step we recovered and that is why I am quite proud of what we did. We were not very well, we were fast but not every lap, but we recovered, we found a solution and we worked on ourselves and we came back to our level.
"At one point we were 30 points behind and here we came 20 ahead, so we gained 50 points in a short time. I am very proud of what we did with my team."
Muller admitted that there was a time when he thought Huff's points lead was insurmountable.
"Especially at that moment Rob was very fast, he was on the moon, even himself he thought nothing could happen to him, but fortunately for me I could come back at my best level," said Muller.
The Frenchman added that with two world titles now under his belt, he still had plenty of motivation to fight for more.
"The motivation is because it is my life," Muller said. "I am 42, I started at 10. It is what I know to do. I don't know what else to do. It looks like I am not too bad so I keep going."
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