Santiago Urrutia leads Audi 1-2 in final practice at Hockenheim

WRT’s Santiago Urrutia was again fastest in practice at Hockenheim, this time ahead of the only other Audi driver in the field, that of Comtoyou Racing’s Gilles Magnus, while Target Competition’s Josh Files was their closest challenged in third in his Hyundai.

Gilles Magnus was quick to set a target time in the 30-minute session in his Comtoyou Racing Audi RS 3 LMS of 1:48.157, leading the way ahead of Urrutia after ten minutes, with the M1RA Hyundai of Luca Engstler then in third position.

This was just before the red flag came out, as PSS Racing Team’s Viktor Davidovski had crashed out at Turn 10 in his Honda Civic TCR and suffered minor front-end damage.

The session resumed six minutes later with just 12 minutes remaining on the clock.

Magnus went out and immediately improved his time to 1:47.608, while both WRT’s Maxime Potty and DG Sport Competition Peugeot driver Aurélien Comte moved ahead of Files in the ranking, the only other drivers in the 1:47s.

In the final moments of the session, Urrutia shot up to first place on the time sheets, two-tenths clear of Magnus, while British drivers Josh Files and Dan Lloyd made late improvements to move their Hyundai and Hondas respectively up to third and fourth position, ahead of Potty and Comte.

Stian Paulsen was seventh on his TCR Europe series return and the best of the Cupras, with Daniel Nagy’s M1RA Hyundai eighth ahead of Dusan Borkovic’s Target Hyundai entry, with Tom Coronel completing the top ten in his Boutsen Ginion Racing Honda Civic TCR.

The top Renault was that of John Filippi, in his repaired Mégane RS, down in 20th place, 1.7 seconds off the pace.

The next track activity is qualifying at 10:05 CEST on Saturday.