Photo: WTCC Media

Dusan Borkovic delighted with initial pace in the SEAT León Cup Racer

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Dusan Borkovic finished the first test session for the FIA European Touring Car Cup weekend second fastest, just under two-tenths of a second behind Petr Fulín, also driving a SEAT León Cup Racer in the Single-Make Trophy class, and was happy with his pace in his first experience with the car.

The Serbian led the way early on before Fulín found time in the car to go fastest overall, but Borkovic managed to close the gap and finish the session second fastest, splitting the Single-Make Trophy class SEATs of Fulín and Andreas Pfister, with the new SEAT León Cup Racer the strongest cars in the session.

“It feels really nice as I’d never driven the car before and at the start I was just trying to learn the car,” said Borkovic to TouringCarTimes. “I made some mistakes, but I know the car now for tomorrow and I’m pretty confident of a good result. I cannot say I will win the first race, but at least I’ll learn the car.”

Although Fulín was fastest, last year’s TC2 class champion was struggling with the León Cup Racer, having made the switch from the BMW 320si during the off-season. The Czech driver stated he was unhappy with the balance of the car, to which Borkovic added:

“I was struggling also, the car is completely different to the WTCC car, particularly on the brakes. You need to just manage that the car is not the same and you just brake a little bit before and apply a different pressure.

“The TC1 car is even better on the brakes (than the TC2 cars), so it is a (even bigger) difference (to me), whilst the others have already had many kilometres as they’ve known they’re been doing this for two or three months.”

Borkovic also added he’s settling in well at the B3 Racing team which are running the car this weekend, and isn’t experiencing the same kinds of issues which forced him to call an end to his WTCC programme two weeks’ ago.

“The seating position is good, if I had something like that in the Honda, it would have been perfect,” he said. “I’m also really happy with the team and the people at B3 Racing, everything is just incredible.”