Photo: TCR Europe

Mike Halder sets the pace in FP2 at Spa-Francorchamps

By

Team Halder’s Mike Halder emerged as the quickest driver in the second TCR Europe series practice session at Spa-Francorchamps.

The Honda Civic Type-R TCR driver set a best time of 2:55.481, to beat series returnee and long-time pacesetter, Volcano Motorsport’s Mikel Azcona by just seven-hundredths of a second.

Light but persistant rain on Thursday evening meant that the track was decidedly wet for the duration of the 30-minute session, with lap-times gradually improving throughout.

Azcona posted an initial benchmark of 2:56.562, which was improved on significantly as the session wore on. The WTCR race-winner dropped his time by a full second-and-a-half approaching the halfway stage.

Target Competition’s John Filippi was Azcona’s nearest challenger for the majority of the session, with his Hyundai i30 N TCR 1.244s slower than the older generation of Cupra.

The newer Cupra León Competición of Nicola Baldan was an impressive third fastest, with the former TCR Italy champion setting a time late on in the session to go second quickest to Azcona, before being usurped by Halder’s final effort.

Despite the Peugeots not being as high as they were in FP1, both Teddy and Jimmy Clairet again finished solidly in the top 10, with the former fourth fastest and the latter ending up eighth in the pair of Team Clairet Sport Peugeot 308TCRs.

Filippi was fifth, while Target Competition team-mate Andreas Bäckman was sixth ahead of title contender Mehdi Bennani (Comtoyou Racing Audi RS 3 LMS).

Proving the pace of the Cupra both old and new, Evgenii Leonov was ninth quickest in the second Volcano Cupra León, while Bennani’s team-mate Nicolas Baert rounded out the top ten.

Brutal Fish Racing had a difficult session, with Pepe Oriola only managing 13th and Dan Lloyd 18th in their Honda Civic Type-R.

Two cars did not set a time during the session. Comtoyou Racing’s Sami Taoufik and Team Clairet Sport’s Stephane Ventaja.

Next up for TCR Europe is qualifying, which is scheduled to start at 11:40 CET.