Mat’o Homola fastest in Salzburgring shakedown session
B3 Racing’s Mat’o Homola was fastest of all in Sunday morning’s shakedown session at the Salzburgring, leading team-mate Dusan Borkovic by just over a tenth of a second, with Craft-Bamboo’s James Nash completing an all SEAT top three.
The session took place at an overcast but dry circuit following yesterday afternoon’s heavy rain storm, with Homola’s time of 1:26.936 just a few tenths shy of the lap record set by his team-mate and Race 2 pole-sitter Attila Tassi in the dry first part of qualifying on Saturday.
The best of the non-SEATs was Gianni Morbidelli, with the Italian setting the fourth fastest time in his WestCoast Racing Honda Civic TCR, just over half a second from Homola’s best.
The quickest of the Volkswagens was Austrian wild card entry Florian Janits, though the Engstler driver had an excursion at the end of the session at Turn 4 which saw the yellow flags deployed for the final minutes of the ten-minute shakedown.
15 of the 16 cars entered for today’s races took part, with the repaired Alfa Romeo Giulietta of Michela Cerruti 13th, two spots behind new team-mate Petr Fulín in 11th, and with Nash’s qualifying problems resolved with a broken drive flange, the British driver was the best-placed of the Craft-Bamboo Racing trio in third.
Race 1 pole-sitter Jean-Karl Vernay sat out the session in his Volkswagen Golf, while team-mate Stefano Comini set only an installation lap in his Golf GTI TCR and was 14th fastest.
The first race starts at 12:35 CET, with rain anticipated in the area early in the afternoon.
