Mikel Azcona heads Franco Girolami in first Monza free practice

Points leader Mikel Azcona was on his own in the first free practice session of the TCR Europe weekend at Monza, heading title rival Franco Girolami by close to three tenths of a second.

“It’s a really good way to start the weekend like this, being the fastest in this really high-speed track,” said Azcona.

“It’s only free practice 1, but we saw on the last lap that Girolami set the fastest top speed in a straight line with 60kgs of ballast, so it means he was also really fast.”

The Volcano Motorsport driver lapped the iconic Italian circuit in 1:58.247, setting his lap time right at the end of the session.

Sébastien Loeb Racing driver Felice Jelmini topped the session for the most part but fell down to finish third, four tenths of a second behind Azcona.

Honda driver Martin Ryba was just 0.025 seconds behind Jelmini in fourth position while WTCR driver Tom Coronel was fifth fastest for Comtoyou Racing.

Evgeny Leonov was sixth fastest for Volcano Motorsport while Jack Young and Jimmy Clairet rounded off the top eight.

Trouble hit Mat’o Homola who was forced to stop on track at the end of the session in the second sector due to a technical issue with his Hyundai. This meant that there were no improvements to the times after that as the sector was under yellow flags.

The second free practice session starts at 16:20 CEST.