Mat’o Homola quickest as Hyundai dominate opening Monza practice

Target Competition’s Mat’o Homola set the fastest time in the first practice session for the TCR Europe series season finale at Monza, as Hyundai dominated proceedings.

The South Korean manufacturer had eight cars represented inside the top ten as the 25-minute session was over, with Target filling five of the first six positions.

Homola posted a quickest time of 1:57.488, which was just over a tenth of a second faster than the Team Engstler Hyundai i30 N TCR of Luca Engstler.

Points leader Josh Files was third quickest in the second of the Target Competition i30s, ahead of team-mates Andreas Bäckman, Dominik Baumann and Jessica Bäckman.

Files, who comes into the weekend with a 48-point advantage over nearest title rival Julien Briché, set the early pace, posting a 1:58.230.

He was soon beaten by Engstler, who went half a second quicker on his first representative run, with Jessica Bäckman slotting into second. Files then improved to usurp Bäckman, but Engstler went quicker still and his final effort was enough to end the session on top.

It was a difficult opening session for Brutal Fish Racing Team as both Dan Lloyd and team owner Martin Ryba stopped on track.

Lloyd was halted by a car issue halfway through the session, while Ryba brought out the red flags after crashing at the first Lesmo corner with just over a minute remaining, bringing a premature end to the action.

Behind the dominant Hyundais, Gilles Magnus took his Comtoyou Audi RS 3 LMS to the seventh fastest time, albeit over eight-tenths of a second adrift of Homola’s best.

M Racing’s Natan Bihel eighth in another Hyundai i30 N TCR, with the similar i30 of BRC Racing’s Luca Filippi ninth.

Santiago Urrutia rounded out the top ten in the WRT Audi RS 3 LMS.

TCR Europe series debutant Sami Taoufik was an impressive 11th quickest, beating the best of the Volkswagen Golf GTI TCRs of Gianni Morbidelli for WestCoast Racing.

Title contender Briché was only 14th fastest in his JSB Compétition Peugeot 308TCR, some 1.354 seconds off the pace.

The second free practice session at Monza is scheduled to take place at 16:20 CET.