Photo: TCR Media

Pepe Oriola tops first test session at the Salzburgring

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Craft-Bamboo Racing’s Pepe Oriola was fastest of all in the two-hours first test session at the Salzburgring, with the SEAT driver just 0.054 seconds ahead of the M1RA Honda of Attila Tassi, with new Craft-Bamboo team-mate Dan Lloyd third quickest.

Oriola topped the time sheets with a lap time of 1:26.420 in his SEAT León TCR, with the top 14 cars all within a second of Oriola’s time in the sunny conditions.

Behind Lloyd was reigning champion Stefano Comini in the Comtoyou Racing Audi RS 3, with James Nash making sure all three Craft-Bamboo SEATs were in the top five.

The second-best Audi of Frédéric Vervisch was sixth quickest, followed by Roberto Colciago’s Honda, carrying the maximum 30kg of success ballast this weekend, with the Alfa of Dusan Borkovic, the Audi of Milovan Vesnic and the Team WRT Volkswagen of Rob Huff completing the top ten.

22 of the 23 cars took part in the session, with the Top Run Motorsport Subaru WRX STi of Luigi Ferrara opting to sit out the test.

There’s a further one hour test at 13:15 CET.