Photo: TCR

Mikel Azcona tops first practice session of TCR Europe finale in Barcelona

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Mikel Azcona kicked off the final round of the TCR Europe season with the fastest time in first practice at the Circuit de Catalunya, beating series newcomer Nathanaël Berthon by over half a second.

The PCR Sport Cupra driver set a time of 1m54.931s to edge the Comtoyou Audi RS 3 LMS of Berthon by a fraction over five-tenths of a second.

Azcona currently leads Team WRT’s Jean-Karl Vernay by 19 points and could take the championship before Sunday’s second race.

Vernay took his Audi RS 3 LMS – which has 60kg of compensation weight this weekend – to the fifth fastest time, behind the KCMG Honda Civic Type R FK8 of Attila Tassi and 2017 BTCC champion Ash Sutton in the WestCoast Racing Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR.

The other championship contender, Target Competition’s Dusan Borkovic set the sixth quickest time in his Hyundai i30 N TCR.

Berthon led the initial running with a 1m55.439, before Azcona produced a superb lap following a red flag stoppage with eight minutes of the 45-minute session remaining.

Vernay and Borkovic were set to post faster times but faded off in the last sector and could not improve on their positions.

Sutton was particularly impressive in his first outing in the WestCoast Golf GTI. He initially ran sixth but improved to third in the closing stages to lie just over sixth-hundredths of a second behind Berthon’s Audi.

Behind Stian Paulsen’s Cupra in eighth was Tassi’s new KCMG team-mate Mike Halder. The TCR Germany front-runner was just over seven-tenths of a second adrift of Azcona, but ahead of another newcomer Andreas Bäckman in the second WestCoast car in ninth.

Peter Terting completed the top ten in his Hyundai i30 N TCR.

There were a number of drivers who surprisingly lacked pace during the session, including the two M1RA Hyundais of WTCR regular Norbert Michelisz and Dániel Nagy, who were 14th and 16th respectively.

The third KCMG Honda Civic of Josh Files also had a session to forget as he only ended up 17th, some 1.5 seconds of the pace of Azcona.