Photo: TCR Media

Gianni Morbidelli tops disrupted second practice in Macau

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Gianni Morbidelli was fastest of all for WestCoast Racing in the Honda Civic TCR in the second free practice session, while team-mate Tiago Monteiro has a session to forget after a turbo problem saw the Portuguese driver mired down in 30th.

The drivers had no opportunity to set a timed lap before the red flag was out after Viper Niza Racing’s Douglas Khoo crashed his SEAT León at Fishermans’ Bend, not long after the Craft-Bamboo Racing pair of Pepe Oriola and James Nash had tried out slipstreaming at Mandarin, but with less than ideal results after they made contact on the way into Lisboa.

After Khoo’s car was recovered and the session restarted, Pepe Oriola set the first benchmark with a time of 2:36.071, which was swiftly beaten by Morbidelli.

Dusan Borkovic and Mat’o Homola then moved up to the top two spots, before Sunny Wong was the next to crash out at Fishermans’ Bend, damaging the rear of his Citroën C-Elysée.

With ten minutes to go, the times began to improve further, with Pepe Oriola jumping to the front thanks to a slipstream from team-mate Nash, with Oriola underneath Monteiro’s time from Thursday.

Gianni Morbidelli then produced a stellar lap to go fastest of all, which held for the remainder of the session, a time of 2:33.495.

There were further incidents as Tin Sritrai crashed his Team Thailand Honda out at Lisboa, while further up the hill Kevin Tse ran into trouble as he caught Zhang Ya Qi’s Linky Racing Audi A3, and hit the barriers and was forced to stop.

Morbidelli finished the session almost half a second clear of Oriola, with Stefano Comini third fastest in the Leopard Racing Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR, with team-mate Jean-Karl Vernay fourth.

Championship leader James Nash was fifth fastest ahead of the two B3 SEATs, with Target Competition Honda driver Josh Files, B3’s Attila Tassi and Engstler Motorsport’s Andy Yan completing the top ten.

The best-placed of the CTCC contenders was Alex Hui, who was just outside of the top ten in his Teamwork Citroën, just over five seconds off the pace.

The next session is qualifying, which is scheduled to get underway at 7:30am local time on Saturday (0:30am CET).