Tony D’Alberto beats Nathan Morcom by 0.0082 seconds in first test of 2020
Tony D’Alberto was fastest for Wall Racing Honda in the first official TCR Australia series test day of 2020 at Winton Raceway, beating Hyundai rival Nathan Morcom by a mere 0.0082 seconds.
“We had a really good day. We got through quite a few things we wanted to try,” said D’Alberto.
“The car was much better than when we raced here last year. We’ve made a bit of an improvement with the set up and our philosophy. With the set up, it was nice to be the quickest today. It does mean a lot. Obviously we’re happy about it, but we know there’s a huge amount of work to do.”
The Honda Civic Type-R TCR driver lapped the circuit in 1:24.1842, with the HMO Customer Racing duo of Morcom and reigning champion Will Brown in third, 0.0173 seconds behind his team-mate.
Garry Rogers Motorsport driver Jordan Cox was fourth fastest with his Alfa Romeo Giulietta TCR, 0.2312 seconds from the top time.
D’Alberto’s team-mate John Martin put his Honda in fifth position, just 0.0386 seconds behind Cox.
Aaron Cameron made it five different makes in the top six with his Peugeot 308TCR, just below three tenths of a second from the top time.
Zac Soutar of Team Soutar Motorsport and Dylan O’Keeffe of Garry Rogers Motorsport rounded off the top eight, four and five tenths of a second from D’Alberto respectively.
Former Supercars Championship race winner Jason Bargwanna was tenth fastest for GRM Customer Racing, 0.5133 from P1.
A total of 15 cars took to the track during the test, with nine of the cars within half a second.
Next up for the drivers is the TCR Asia Pacific Cup, held during the Melbourne Grand Prix on March 14-15th.
