Mike Halder scores his second victory of the season at Barcelona
Honda driver Mike Halder dominated the first TCR Europe series race of the race weekend at Barcelona, claiming his second victory of the season. Brutal Fish driver Pepe Oriola held off Comtoyou Racing’s Sami Taoufik until the finishing line to finish second at his home race.
The changing conditions at the Barcelona track held a question mark over which tyres to use for the race, with the entire field mounting slicks on the grid.
At the start Halder got ahead of pole sitter Mat’o Homola of the BRC Racing Team.
Oriola, driving a Honda Civic Type-R TCR, took third place at the start and then second place from Homola before the end of the first lap. Mehdi Bennani, driving an Audi RS 3 LMS, climbed up to fourth place.
Further back, Target Competition drivers José Manuel Sapag and Jessica Bäckman collided on lap two, with the Swedish driver hitting the Argentinian from behind. Both were able to rejoin the track, with Sapag sustaining damage to the rear of his car.
At the front, Halder built a comfortable lead, with Homola losing ground to Oriola and falling into the grips of Bennani and his team-mate Sami Taoufik.
Michelle Halder of Team Halder retired in the pits at the end of the fourth lap due to a technical issue.
Teddy Clairet, driving a Peugeot 308 TCR, had climbed up to the points-scoring positions but received a drive-through penalty for causing an incident.
Taoufik overtook Bennani for fourth place on lap six, with the Comtoyou pair then starting to chase Homola. The Moroccan overtook the Slovakian at Turn 1 on lap seven for third place.
Oriola saw his gap to Taoufik vanishing over the course of two laps, with the Moroccan coming under the Spaniard’s rear bumper with just two laps to the end of the race. Oriola had to defend from Taoufik at Turn 1 on the last lap but was able to stay ahead.
Championship leader Dan Lloyd of Brutal Fish Racing went wide on the last lap, falling to 16th place, just out of the points-scoring positions.
At the chequered flag, Halder took his second victory of the year, the first driver to score two races this year. Oriola held off Taoufik until the finishing line to take second place.
Homola was fourth, followed by Bennani and BRC Racing Team’s Dániel Nagy in sixth ahead of Andreas Bäckman of Target Competition.
Target Competition’s John Filippi finished eighth, followed by JSB Competition driver Julien Briché.
Nicolas Baert rounded off the top ten with his Audi RS 3 LMS.
Halder said after the race: “I had a really good start. This is the only track that I had visited before, and I had good memories of this track. I’m really happy. My team have done a great work, we are far away from home and it’s great to have achieve this result and score good points for the championship.”
The second race starts tomorrow at 13:55 CEST.
