Jean-Karl Vernay sets TCR lap record in first practice at Macau
Team WRT’s Jean-Karl Vernay was fastest of all in the first free practice session at Macau, leading the Honda of Esteban Guerrieri and the Hyundai of Yvan Muller, despite carrying 60kg of compensation weight this weekend.
The Audi Sport customer racing driver was quick from the start, steadily improving his times throughout the session, with his best lap coming right at the end, where he eclipsed the three-year-old lap record of Rob Huff, set during qualifying during the 2015 race meeting, with a time of 2:31.328.
Vernay’s closest rival was the Münnich Honda Civic Type R TCR of Esteban Guerrieri, who was over half a second behind, with Macau master Rob Huff third fastest in his Sébastien Loeb Racing Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR.
Yvan Muller was the best-placed of the Hyundai drivers in fourth, 1.2 seconds back, with Norbert Michelisz in the rival BRC Racing Team Hyundai fifth quickest.
Yann Ehrlacher, who’s believed to be taking part in his last weekend with the Münnich Motorsport Honda team before joining his uncle Yvan at Cyan Racing next year, with sixth fastest, ahead of future team-mate Thed Björk.
Mehdi Bennani was eighth in his Volkswagen, with championship outsider Pepe Oriola’s Cupra ninth, missing the first half of the session due to a gearbox issue, and with Aurélien Panis completing the top ten in the fastest of the Comtoyou Racing Audis.
Championship leader Gabriele Tarquini was 12th, three seconds from Vernay’s time, while Kevin Tse was the fastest of the wild card entries in 23rd in his Teamwork Motorsport Audi RS 3 LMS, 5.5 seconds from the pace.
The session was incident free, with no cars making contact with the barriers, though a few of the new wild cards caused some traffic issues for the front runners, with Lam Kam San the slowest in his Champ Motorsport Audi, 14 seconds slower than Vernay.
The two Zengo Motorsport Cupras of Norbert Nagy and Zsolt Szabo failed to set a time.
The next session is Free Practice 2 at 13:30 CST (06:30 CET).
