Tiago Monteiro leads the way in Macau free practice
Tiago Monteiro was fastest in today’s free practice at Macau. The Portuguese driver improved on the last lap, jumping ahead of Craft Bamboo’s Pepe Oriola and WestCoast Racing’s Gianni Morbidelli.
Despite a red flag early in the session, the rest of the 30 minutes was pretty smooth, with only a few minor spins and incidents.
The Leopard Racing duo of Stefano Comini and Jean-Karl Vernay initially dominated the session, the two swapping places into the lead once the session resumed. Meanwhile Oriola gradually started to pick up pace and with almost 10 minutes to go jumped into the lead in his SEAT.
As Raphaël Galiana gave the Macau walls a couple of kisses, the Honda Civic TCRs of Tiago Monteiro and Gianni Morbidelli also started to improve, with the Portuguese eventually jumping up into the lead just under the flag. Oriola was left in second place in his Craft-Bamboo SEAT, with Gianni Morbidelli in third, also improving on the last lap.
Vernay and Comini were fourth and fifth respectively, ahead of TCR Germany champion Josh Files. The Honda driver finished ahead of Craft-Bamboo team-mates Sergey Afanasyev and James Nash, the Brit surely paying the price of the ballast he is carrying in the first session. TCR Asia champion Andy Yan was ninth in his Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR, with Davit Kajaia completing the top ten.
The fastest CTCC car was Sunny Wong’s Teamwork Citroën, in 13th place overall.
Action will resume tomorrow for the second free practice session at 12:30 local time.
