All to play for in TCR Benelux finale this weekend at TT Assen
The second season of the TCR Benelux Touring Car Championship comes to a close this weekend, with six drivers in contention for the 2017 TCR Benelux drivers’ title at the TT Circuit Assen, in The Netherlands.
Due to the unique car sharing method of Benelux, that’s effectively four ‘groups’ of drivers, with last year’s champion Stéphane Lémeret absent for the third time this season, with the Boutsen Ginion Honda driver not actively defending his title in 2017 after a disastrous start to the season, with a no-score in the first round at Spa-Francorchamps, and an outing at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
His Boutsen Ginion team though are leading the standings heading in, this time with 18-year-old Benjamin Lessennes, who only passed his driving test in the summer.
Lessennes has won four sprint races on his own this season, and won the qualifying long race at Zolder in May with Tom Coronel, with the Dutchman also winning both his sprint races on the same weekend, earning another 50 points for Lessennes title challenge.
Coronel will be back with Lessennes this weekend, but his return comes at a price. Although he skipped the last two rounds due to clashing commitments in the WTCC and in the VLN, Coronel still has to carry his maximum success ballast of 30kg, which Lessennes will also have to run during his sprint heats, despite only having earned 20kg after his results last time out at Mettet.
Lessennes’ closest rival in the championship is the 24-year-old Belgian Guillaume Mondron, who is certainly the underdog in the title fight in the Delahaye Racing entry. Mondron has had a rotation of not only co-drivers but cars throughout the season, twice racing with his brother Edouard, twice with TCR International star Giacomo Altoè, and once with Lorenzo Donniacuo.
In terms of cars, Mondron has run twice with the SEAT León TCR, and three times with the Volkswagen Golf GTI – he’ll end the season with the Golf, and with his brother sharing the car. This is the first time Edouard has driven the Golf since his successful debut in the TCR International Series at Spa-Francorchamps back in May.
Mondron is just 14 points behind Lessennes with a very significant 125 still to play for at Assen, though significantly Mondron hasn’t been on the top step of the podium since the qualifying race at Zandvoort, the second round of the championship.
Last year’s runner-up team DG Sport Compétition are back in the fight for the title, with a completely different programme this year. The team, which ran an Opel Astra TCR for Frédéric Caprasse and Pierre-Yves Corthals last year, are now running the Peugeot 308 Racing Cup for Aurélien Comte and Kevin Abbring, with the smaller capacity engine still helping the team deliver at the twisty circuits, with only Spa not having played in their favour.
Also in contention, just 49 points back, are the Team WRT pair of Maxime Potty and Mathieu Detry. Detry took two wins in the sprint races in the second heat at Zolder, with consistency being key to the Volkswagen pairs title charge in the latter half of the season after two DNFs at Spa-Francorchamps and Zandvoort at the start of the year.
Entry list
No – Driver 1/Driver 2 – Team – Car
2 – Benjamin Lessennes/Tom Coronel – Boutsen Ginion Racing – Honda Civic TCR
4 – Guillaume Mondron/Edouard Mondron – Delahaye Racing – Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR
6 – TBA/TBA – Ferry Monster Autosport – SEAT León TCR
7 – Sam Dejonghe/Denis Dupont – Team WRT – SEAT León TCR
8 – Aurélien Comte/Kevin Abbring – DG Sport Compétition – Peugeot 308 Racing Cup
52 – Maxime Potty/Mathieu Detry – Team WRT – Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR
56 – Willem Meyer/Paul Sieljes – Bas Koeten Racing – Audi RS 3 LMS
66 – Mika Morien/Rik Breukers – Bas Koeten Racing – Audi RS 3 LMS
Timetable
Friday 20th October
17:00 – Free Practice
Saturday 21st October
12:00 – Qualifying
16:50 – Qualifying Long Race (60 minutes)
Sunday 22nd October
10:55 – Sprint Race 1 (20 minutes)
11:20 – Sprint Race 2 (20 minutes)
17:00 – Sprint Race 3 (20 minutes)
17:25 – Sprint Race 4 (20 minutes)
