Jaap van Lagen enjoys strong weekend at Zandvoort

A week after a tough TCR International Series debut with Team WRT, with engine troubles hampering the Dutch driver’s progress, van Lagen took two wins from two of the TCR Benelux series sprint races in the Certainty Racing-run Audi RS 3 LMS.

Van Lagen led from pole position to victory in Race 1, challenged only at the start by Tom Coronel’s Honda Civic and Aurélien Comte’s Peugeot 308, while in Race 2 he had to fight Comte for the lead after the DG Sport driver managed to get ahead at the start.

“The Peugeot was unbelievably good at the start,” said van Lagen to TouringCarTimes. “In the first race he was next to me but I was able to keep the lead, but in the second race he overtook me. However, I knew his speed was not as good as my Audi, but their traction was really good.

“I first tried to overtake him around the outside, but that’s difficult, so on the the next lap I did it differently and crossed to the inside and it worked.”

Van Lagen and the Certainty Racing squad were fast throughout the weekend, though their quick pace in qualifying was soon wiped out due to a ride height infringement. Van Lagen then produced the best lap in the qualifying long race to secure pole position for the first of his two sprint races on Sunday.

“The team did a good job,” he said. “(After qualifying) we changed a few things, but on race day the car was really good, we could easily do 46.5s and we were really faster than all the others.”