Priaulx adopts conservative tactics

Priaulx has already won two of the four races held so far this year, which means that he goes into his home race at Brands Hatch this weekend with 70kg of success ballast.

The Briton believes that this year's ballast rules mean he is going to have to battle at the lower end of the points paying positions to stay in the championship hunt. Weight is now added according to the total number of points accumulated as well as the result of the preceding race meeting.

"My goal this weekend and for the rest of the year is just to get points," Priaulx told autosport.com.

"I need to have the self confidence and push the ego away to ensure that if the car is capable of taking eighth and just one point then that is what I should do. I know that is not what people want to hear."

Priaulx was only tenth quickest in today's additional testing session, arranged by the FIA because Brands Hatch is a new circuit to the WTCC.

"It's hard, really hard here," he added. "I pretty much put a fairly good lap together and I'm a second off the pace. Thommo [James Thompson] has done a 1:33.6 and I've done a 1:34.6 so I'm going to be quite a long way off the pace this weekend. Seventy kilograms of ballast is too much for sure.

"I'm tenth at the moment so maybe I can scrape into the top eight on reverse grid and lead the second race and fight like hell for as many laps as possible. But it is going to be tough now."

As a result Priaulx has called on the championship's organisers to review the ballast regulations.

"It's up to them to look at the performance over the whole year but we are still paying the price for the E46, the previous car, which was a great success for us," he said.

"This new car has got massive potential but it is at the beginning stages of its development.

"The tyres have got a very soft tyre wall and with the extra weight the car is moving around more. Yvan [Muller] proved the ballast was too much at Magny Cours. After two second places at Monza, he finished nowhere in his home race."