Photo: TCR Media

Pepe Oriola tops first practice session at the Salzburgring

Team Craft-Bamboo Lukoil driver Pepe Oriola was fastest of all in the 30-minute practice session at the Salzburgring circuit in Austria for the sixth round of the TCR International Series in his SEAT León Racer.

The Spaniard was just under a tenth of a second faster than WestCoast Racing’s Gianni Morbidelli, despite the Italian carrying 30kg of success ballast this weekend aboard his Honda Civic after his double victory last weekend in Monza, with Morbidelli’s team-mate Kevin Gleason third.

The session was relatively uneventful, with Lorenzo Veglia experiencing a front-left puncture on his Liqui Moly Team Engstler-run SEAT and returning to the pits with ten minutes remaining, and with technical problems preventing Campos Racing’s Fernando Monje from completing a timed lap in the session. This meant just 14 cars set times during the session.

Oriola and his Craft-Bamboo team-mate Sergey Afanasyev swapped times at the top of the time sheets during the first half of the practice, with the two drivers at one point joint-fastest after setting the same time to the same one-thousandth of a second.

The Hondas focussed on setting their quick laps during the final half of the session however, which brought Gianni Morbidelli and Kevin Gleason to the fore. Stefano Comini was the fastest of the Target Competition SEAT drivers in fourth, with Craft-Bamboo’s Jordi Gené and Sergey Afanasyev eventually finishing fifth and sixth fastest.

Mikhail Grachev was the top placed Engstler Motorsport driver in seventh, ahead of Zzolt Dávid Szabó in the Zengo Motorsport entry. The two Target Competition SEATs of Michel Nykjaer and Andrea Belicchi completed the top ten, with the top 12 cars all within a second of Oriola’s time.

The next practice session takes place at 12:00 CET.