Dusan Borkovic confident after strong first practice pace for the Alfa Romeo

The two GE-Force Alfa Romeos showed good pace in the first free practice session at the Buriram International Circuit, with Dusan Borkovic fourth and team-mate Davit Kajaia seventh by the end of the 30-minute session.

Borkovic, twice a winner earlier this year, hopes for improved reliability after some recent troubles at the Thai circuit, and although he’s cautious about his rivals pace in practice as the level of everyone’s tyres is unknown, he believes this circuit is more suited to the Alfa than the last two events in Hungary and Germany.

“The car has nice pace, and I hope it’ll last to the end of the race and also that we don’t have any problems,” said Borkovic to TouringCarTimes.

“In Oschersleben, we had to fit a completely new turbo, and it didn’t work so well. Now, the car is much better, and at circuits like this, and like Bahrain, Salzburg, you can drive. Even though there are slow corners, you can drive through them with more speed than the slow long corners like at Oschersleben and the Hungaroring.”

“You never know what tyres everyone’s on though, they could have 20, or 50 or 100km on them, so we’ll see after the second practice where we all are.”