Agustín Canapino wins heat two in Rafaela for Peugeot

Peugeot Lo Jack Team’s Agustín Canapino has won the second qualifying heat at Rafaela for the opening round of the 2014 Super TC 2000 Championship, and secured a front-row spot behind team-mate Néstor Girolami for this afternoon’s feature race.

Esteban Guerrieri had started from pole postion in his Toyota Corolla with Franco Vivian and Norberto Fontana’s Chevrolets behind him. The Toyota driver held on to the lead at the start, but at the final chicane, while Vivian was trying to pass Guerrieri down the inside, Fontana charged around the outside of the pair of them, braking late for the chicane, in fact slightly too late, bouncing across the kerbs and baulked Guerrieri, which allowed Vivian ahead into the lead and Peugeot’s Agustín Canapino to move ahead of Guerrieri and into third.

The race was then held behind the safety car after a coming together further down the order between Toyota’s Bernardo Llaver and Renault’s Emiliano Spataro, with an angry Spataro running straight up to Llaver’s car to vent his frustration about the incident while Llaver remained in the car.

The race restarted on lap four, with Vivian leading team-mate Fontana and Canapino third. At the action-packed final chicane, Canapino dived down the inside of both Fontana and Vivian’s Chevrolets to take the lead, with Fontana now moving ahead team-mate Vivian.

Vivian would lose further ground on the penultimate lap as he was tackled by Guerrieri’s Toyota, but this allowed former Honda driver Damian Fineschi, now in the Peugeot Lequipe Junior car through and up to third position, with Guerrieri finishing fourth and Vivian down in sixth behind Facundo Chapur’s Peugeot.

Canapino held on to take the win ahead of Norberto Fontana, but with two laps lost behind the safety car, the race time of the first heat was faster than that of heat two, and so he will line-up behind team-mate Néstor Girolami for this afternoon’s 22 lap main race which begins at 12:30 ART.