Mehdi Bennani fends off stern Azcona challenge for maiden TCR Europe win at Slovakiaring

Reigning TCR Europe series champion Mehdi Bennani staved off a fierce challenge from Mikel Azcona to claim his, and the Hyundai Elantra’s first series race win in a thrilling second encounter at the Slovakiaring.

Bennani started from pole position for the reversed grid race two and led all the way, despite a superb charge from race one winner and 2018 champion Azcona in his Volcano Motorsport Cupra León Competición.

PSS Racing’s Franco Girolami completed the podium in third, just under three seconds adrift of Bennani, after fending off an equally entertaining battle with VRC-Team’s Klim Gavrilov.

Bennani got off the line well in his Sébastien Loeb Racing Elantra and led the way into the first corner, as team-mate and fellow front-row starter Felice Jelmini bogged down and dropped to sixth place.

Girolami had a superb start from fifth on the grid and challenged the similarly fast-starting Gavrilov for second at Turn 1 before making the move stick at Turn 2, shortly before the safety car was deployed as Sami Taoufik failed to get off the line.

Taoufik’s SLR Elantra was quickly pushed into the pits, meaning just a solitary lap behind the safety car was required, with Bennani leading again off the restart from Girolami.

Azcona’s charge through the field from ninth was effective and before long, he was past Gavrilov and Girolami and into second place.

Then the battle for the lead raged in the second half of the race, with Azcona’s Cupra the faster car but Bennani’s defence proving more than enough to maintain a slender half-second margin by the finish.

Remarkably, this was Bennani’s first victory in TCR Europe, and his first since 2018 and it came as a result of cool composure in front of arguably the form driver in the series, Azcona.

Behind, the scrap for the final podium position was just as intense, with Girolami falling into the clutches of Gavrilov’s Audi. But Girolami kept his Honda Civic Type-R TCR ahead with a strong closing few laps.

Zengo Motorsport’s Dániel Nagy completed a positive weekend in his Cupra with fifth, ahead of Comtoyou Racing’s Tom Coronel and the Brutal Fish Racing Honda Civic Type-R of Isidro Callejas. Coronel’s team-mate Nicolas Baert was a somewhat subdued eighth after his second-place in race one, while Jimmy Clairet gave the Team Clairet Sport Peugeot 308TCR its best finish of the weekend.

Dušan Borković completed the top ten in his Comtoyou Racing Audi RS 3 LMS, but it could have been a far better result for the Serbian after starting seventh on the grid.

Borković was his usual combative self in the early phases of the race and had been running strong inside the top 10. But a small brush with the SLR Elantra of Niels Langeveld – after which Langeveld retired with an apparent overheating issue – shuffled Borković down to ninth, and the Audi seemed to lose pace in the closing laps.

Azcona heads the standings on 84 points, with Bennani in second on 62 and Nagy third on 60 points.

Up next for TCR Europe is round two at Paul Ricard in the south of France, which is scheduled to take place on the weekend of the 28-30th May.