Viktor Andersson handed suspended penalty after TCR Europe debut

Touring car racing debutant Viktor Andersson has been given a suspended penalty after an incident-filled opening race of the TCR Europe at Algarve.

The Swedish teenager and single-seater racing convert, driving a Lynk & Co 03 TCR for the MA:GP team run by his father Mattias, qualified 15th and gained a place on lap one thanks to the retirement of Santiago Urrutia.

He then passed Target Competition’s Dušan Borković for 13th, with the pair both then clearing Comtoyou Racing’s Viktor Davidovski.

However in the second half of the race Andersson fell sharply down the order and then retired, having got involved in further wheel-to-wheel battles that proved costly.

Upon reviewing his race, the stewards determined that Andersson had forced Borković off the track at Turn 11 and Turn 12, and that Borković had actually done the same back to him.

They also found Anderson guilty of forcing off Davidovski, and issued him a ten-second penalty for the offense. But due to his retirement, they wrote “to impose a dropping of three-grid position, the penalty is suspended to the commitment of the same infraction in the Portimao (Race 2) and Pau rounds”.

Race 2 is scheduled to start at 11:30 local time on Sunday, while round two of the TCR World Tour and TCR Europe season on the streets of Pau takes place on May 12-14.