Ferenc Ficza fastest in Friday test at Rustavi
Zele Racing’s Ferenc Ficza set the pace in the two-hour test session on Friday at the Rustavi International Motopark in Georgia, finishing just 16-thousandths of a second ahead of Team WRT’s Jean-Karl Vernay.
Hungarian driver Ficza, running in the SEAT León guest car for the next two rounds before rejoining Zengõ Motorsport with their new Kia in Belgium, set a best time near the end of the session of 1:42.333, with a flurry of improvements during the final minutes of the session.
Vernay was second quickest in the Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR, with another Hungarian, M1RA’s Attila Tassi, third fastest in the Honda Civic, also within a tenth of a second.
Two of the Craft-Bamboo SEATs followed, with Pepe Oriola just seven-hundredths of a second ahead of new team-mate Hugo Valente, with local driver Davit Kajaia sixth in the GE-Force Alfa Romeo Giulietta.
Gianni Morbidelli, now driving a Volkswagen for WestCoast Racing, was seventh fastest, ahead of fellow Italian Roberto Colciago, eighth in the M1RA Honda Civic.
The top ten were completed by Craft-Bamboo Racing’s James Nash, with TCR International Series newcomer Giacomo Altoe next up in the second of WestCoast’s Volkswagen Golfs.
The best-placed Opel was that of Mat’o Homola, with the Slovakian just missing the top ten, with a time 1.2 seconds down on Ficza’s, while the Audi RS 3 LMS of Stefano Comini was 12th quickest, 1.3 seconds off the pace.
The next session for the TCR International Series cars in Georgia is the 30-minute Free Practice 1 session at 10:00 GET (08:00 CET) tomorrow.
