Frédéric Vervisch fastest in practice one for inaugural TCR World Tour event
Comtoyou Racing’s Frédéric Vervisch set the pace at Algarve in the first ever practice session for the new TCR World Tour, which also marked the start of TCR Europe’s season.
The majority of drivers began the session by doing an outlap and then returning to the pits, but one driver who was not able to was Lynk & Co Cyan Racing’s Ma Qing Hua as he was not allowed on track due to a licence issue.
Volcano Motorsport’s Isaac Smith was the first to set a flying lap, a 1:53.351, with team-mate Lewis Brown joining him in putting a time on the board early on in the half-hour session.
Comtoyou’s John Filippi went fastest after six minutes, setting a 1:53.212 and then improving to 1:52.403 as Target Competition’s Dušan Borković became his closest rival.
Smith then joined Filippi in lapping sub-1:53, with only five drivers having set flying laps after minutes. There was then a flurry of drivers that came through, who had pitted and then headed back on track together, and BRC Racing’s Mikel Azcona lowered the pace significantly by setting a 1:51.701.
His team-mate Norbert Michelisz went third fastest, while Cyan Racing’s Santiago Urrutia and Yann Ehrlacher slotted into fourth and fifth.
Azcona spent less than two minutes on top before Comtoyou’s TCR World Tour driver Vervisch set a 1:51.504 to move 0.197 seconds ahead. Rob Huff, in another of Comtoyou’a Audi RS 3 LMS IIs and also entered this weekend for World Tour points, jumped up to third.
On his next lap Huff made it a Comtoyou one-two by getting within 0.005s of Vervisch’s pace, as Tom Coronel – another Comtoyou driver but focusing on the TCR Europe season – went fourth fastest and MA:GP’s debuting single-seater convert Viktor Andersson climbed up to fifth place in his father Mattias’s Lynk & Co 03 TCR.
Drivers spent more time in the pits during the second half of the session, although Borkovic paid the price of staying out in his Hyundai Elantra N TCR as he picked up multiple warnings after violating track limits six times.
The top six on the timesheet remained almost unchanged to the chequere flag, while Urrutia improved in seventh place with a few minutes to go to demote Filippi to eighth. Filippi was the last of the drivers within a second of Vervisch, with 2.934s covering the 21 drivers that made it on track.
Estonian team ALM Motorsport only sent Nestor Girolami on a flying lap in the last minute, having navigated the track at a non-competitive speed prior to that, and with his first flying lap he jumped straight up to fourth place. He only had time for one more after that, and stayed in fourth place but improved his pace to end the session as the fastest Honda driver and 0.348s off the top.
Practice 2 is scheduled to start at 16:42 local time.
