Dusan Borkovic takes lights-to-flag win in France, Homola penalised

Dusan Borkovic won the first race of the day at Paul Ricard in the FIA European Touring Car Cup, while Mat’o Homola and Andreas Pfister came together while battling for second place, with Homola given a drive-through for the incident.

At the start Borkovic kept the lead into Turn 1, while Homola was able to pass Pfister’s SEAT León up the inside into the corner and take second position.

A sluggish start for the BMWs at the rolling start saw both the TC2T and TC2 class pole-sitters Davit Kajaia and Michal Matejovsky lose a few spots at the start, but while Kajaia maintained the TC2T class lead, Matejovsky fell behind Daniel Conrad’s Rikli Motorsport Honda in TC2.

Borkovic began to pull away as Homola and Pfister battled behind, while Matejovsky continued to lose ground as he was passed by both of the Borusan Otomotiv BMWs on lap two.

On lap four, Pfister managed to take second place from Homola, but heading into Turn 6, Homola made contact with the rear of the German’s SEAT, knocking him off circuit and he lost ground. Homola was able to continue, but was handed a drive-through penalty by the stewards which he served on lap seven and dropped to tenth.

While Kajaia was on his own in the TC2T class battle, the TC2 class fight was the most intense of all, with all four cars in class running together in the middle of the race with Conrad leading Ibrahim Okyay, Peter Rikli and Michal Matejovsky.

Rikli soon dispatched Okyay’s BMW for second in class, and then passed his team-mate Conrad for the lead, closely followed by a recovering Matejovsky. Rikli would hold on to take the class win and finish tenth overall just three-tenths of a second ahead of the Czech driver.

In Super 1600, Nicklas Mackschin led comfortably throughout. The German made a mistake with two laps to go and spun around, losing seven seconds of his 14 second lead over Ulrike Krafft, but was still able to take the class win.

Borkovic went on to win by 6.3 seconds over Petr Fulín, with Davit Kajaia third overall and victorious for the fifth consecutive race in the TC2T class in his Engstler BMW. Pfister effectively lost only one spot from the contact with Homola in the Single-Make Trophy class and finished third in class, fourth overall, ahead of TopCar’s Ronny Jost. Dejan Bulatovic finished sixth for LEIN Racing, while Homola recovered from his drive-through penalty to finish seventh overall, sixth in class, ahead of the other LEIN Racing SEAT of Mladen Lalusic.

The second race gets underway at 15:15 CET, wth Lalusic on the reversed grid pole ahead of Homola.