Photo: TCR Europe

Attila Tassi sets the pace in second TCR Europe practice in Barcelona

KCMG Honda driver Attila Tassi set the quickest time in the second practice session of the TCR Europe series season-finale in Barcelona, with the top four split between four different manufacturers.

Tassi’s best time of 1m54.273 came on his first flying lap of the session and the Hungarian beat the Peugeot 308TCR of Julien Briché by just over a tenth of a second.

The Target Competition Hyundai i30 N TCR of Kris Richard ended the session third fastest, while title contenders Jean-Karl Vernay and Dusan Borkovic remained neck-and-neck in fourth and fifth respectively.

The session was notably faster than the morning’s first running, with Tassi beating the initial benchmark, set by PCR Sport’s Mikel Azcona by seven tenths of a second on his first tour.

Martin Ryba then brought out the red flags five minutes into the session, when the Slovak spun his Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR off into the gravel at the fast Turn 3.

Once his car was rescued and the green flags were shown, it was expected that the times would fall steadily.

This did not happen however, as most cars opted to focus on longer runs. Tassi initially headed KCMG team-mate Mike Halder before Briché jumped ahead in his Peugeot.

The order remained largely unchanged until the closing stages when Maxime Potty, who had languished at the bottom of the table early on, leapt up to eighth place, one behind championship leader Azcona.

After finishing a lowly 17th in FP1, Tassi’s team-mate Josh Files posted the sixth fastest time, albeit over half a second slower than the benchmark.

Behind Potty, Norbert Michelisz ended the session ninth quickest in the M1RA Hyundai i30 N TCR. The Hungarian WTCR regular headed WestCoast Racing’s Ash Sutton, with the Brit rounding out the top ten in his Golf GTI TCR.

Halder slipped out of the top ten in 11th after completing just four laps in his Honda Civic Type R FK8 TCR. The German finished ahead of the second WestCoast Racing Volkswagen of Andreas Bäckman.

Autodis by THX Racing’s Stefano Comini suffered another difficult session, ending up 23rd in his Honda Civic Type R FK8. The Swiss driver had earlier finished 26th in FP1 and again missed out on the top 20.