Santiago Urrutia sweeps practice as Esteban Guerrieri hits trouble
Santiago Urrutia continued to shine in the Aragón fog as he once again headed the timesheets in final practice for the WTCR season-finale, while title contender Esteban Guerrieri failed to complete a single lap.
Urrutia replicated his fine form from FP1 to sweep Saturday’s brace of practice sessions, this time denying the equally impressive Jean-Karl Vernay top spot by 0.128 of a second.
While Lynk & Co Cyan Racing enjoyed another strong outing – Urrutia setting the pace and team-mates Yann Ehrlacher, Yvan Muller and Thed Björk all finishing inside the top eight – it was a vastly different story for Münnich Motorsport Honda and Esteban Guerrieri.
The Argentinian, who holds second in the standings behind Ehrlacher heading into the weekend, was forced to sit out the session altogether while his mechanics performed a brake system change.
That leaves Guerrieri at a big disadvantage heading into qualifying, which is fast approaching and could prove crucial in the title fight.
Adding to Honda’s gloom was an apparent lack of general pace in FP2, with Néstor Girolami the team’s top representative in ninth – a full second off.
Attila Tassi followed suit in tenth, but the Hungarian will have to serve a penalty for an engine change aboard his Civic Type R TCR and will start Sunday’s Race 1 from the back of the grid.
After a less dramatic start to the session, things started to come alive with ten of the 30 minutes to go as José Manuel Sapag produced almost a carbon-copy of his incident in FP1 just an hour earlier.
The Argentinian wild card again struck the very same tyre stack in the Turn 16-17 chicane coming off the back straight, but this time suffered more extensive damage to his Hyundai i30 N TCR.
Sapag tried to nurse his Target Competition car back to the pits, but was forced to stop out on track with damage to his front right suspension, bringing the session to a halt.
With the track also needing some cleaning up at the site of the incident, it took some time before running finally resumed – but when it did, it exploded in a flurry of activity.
Urrutia shot to the top of the timesheets on his first flying lap following the stoppage, establishing a 2:13.540s that remained unbeaten.
The final qualifying session of the year is coming up imminently at 15.00 CET, leaving the teams with less than 45 minutes to prepare their cars for one of the most critical sessions of the season.
