Photo: TTA

Werner & Guerrieri victorious at the Buenos Aires 200km

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Toyota Team Argentina’s Mariano Werner along with Esteban Guerrieri won the team’s third consecutive Buenos Aires 200km race, whilst the retirement of championship leader Matías Rossi closes up the championship.

Werner and Rossi pulled away at the start, building up a lead on the third placed Honda Civic of Nestor Girolami. On lap 18, Rossi had to pit early with a steering problem and hand the car over to Martín Basso. Unfortunately the problem wasn’t resolved, and the Corolla retired six laps later, which sees Rossi remain on 144.5 points in the TC 2000 standings.

The Fiat team went for an alternate strategy, with Diego Aventin starting the race in the No.37 Fiat Linea, with José María López doing the last stint on new tyres. The double champion caught Guerrieri, but wasn’t able to pass the single seater expert, and had to settle for second.

Equipo Petrobras’s Leonel Pernía and Omar Martinez finished on the final podium position, and with this result Pernía closes to just 15 points off of Toyota’s Matías Rossi in the standings, with the other Toyota of Mariano Werner just six points further behind.

Ignacio Char along with Camilo Echevarría took his best finish in the series with fourth for Toyota, with the two Renault LoJack Team Fluences of Guillermo Ortelli/Luis José Di Palma & Mauro Giallombardo/Carlos Okulovich finishing fifth and sixth.

Emiliano Spataro and Cacá Bueno finished in seventh place in their Fiat Linea, with reigning champion Norberto Fontana with Marco Gomes taking the final spot in the top ten, despite Gomes earning the No.1 Ford-YPF Focus a drive through penalty after jumping the start.

A technical problem for the Chevrolet Cruze of Agustín Canapino and Rob Huff as the WTCC points leader was heading out to the grid saw Huff forced to start from the pit lane. Huff made up 20 positions from the back of the grid in the race, but unfortunately the car finally broke down soon after Canapino took over.

Alain Menu had started the other Chevrolet Cruze and was running well in the early stages, but a gearbox failure when the car was handed over to series regular Christian Ledesma meant the weekend was one to forget for the Equipo Oficial Chevrolet team.

The next round of the championship is at Trelew on September 11th.