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Two drivers get grid drops as TCR Europe Race 1 is moved to Sunday

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Heavy rain at Monza has led to the postponement of TCR Europe’s first race from Saturday afternoon to Sunday.

The race had a scheduled 18:25 (CEST) start time and was to be the last track action of Saturday, but several hours before then the schedule was already being disrupted by the weather and the decision was made in the early afternoon to shift the race to Sunday.

There was no guarantee that there would be enough time to fit TCR’s race in if further delays to the day’s other action occurred, and there is at present no rain forecast to hit Monza during daytime hours on Sunday.

Following qualifying, which did go ahead as scheduled, stewards handed out several grid penalties.

Volcano Motorsport’s Daniel Tkachenko filed a protest against Lema Racing’s Giacomo Ghermandi, and Ghermandi was docked three places as it was found he had ignored blue flags and impeded Tkachenko twice in a lap.

Tkachenko also got a three-place grid drop, meaning he and Ghermandi start 12th and 13th on the grid for Race 1. Originally Ghermandi and Tkachenko had qualified 10th and 11th, meaning the latter technically has only been penalised one place on the grid.

The stewards also approved a change of turbo, without penalty, for Comtoyou Racing’s Tom Coronel. The points leader qualified eighth.

Aggressive Team Italia’s Levente Losonczy will start from the back of the grid for both races on Sunday as he had all of his laptimes from qualifying deleted for causing red flags.