Photo: TCR Denmark

Kasper Jensen earns fifth win of year in mixed weather contest

Kasper Jensen is on to five TCR Denmark wins for 2022 after triumphing in mixed weather at Jyllandsringen.

The GMB Motorsport driver dominated in his Honda Civic Type R TCR, winning by 13.357 seconds after just 12 laps of racing.

The race started without rain but on a wet track, and with Mike Halder on pole ahead of Jensen courtesy of the points scored in the weekend’s previous two races.

Not wanting Halder to escape, Jensen attacked as soon as he could but he didn’t have the momentum to make a move exiting turn one and then got swamped out of the way by Halder at turn two.

On the sweep to the longer loop of track he got alongside Halder again and because he had the inside line for the next braking zone it meant he got ahead.

That was job done for Jensen, as he then pulled away rapidly and was nine seconds clear by lap six once rain had returned to the circuit. With more caution on a slippier track his lead plateaued for the next few laps, before he found more pace and added another a few seconds in the last few laps.

Halder looked comfortable in second until that rain came, at which point Gustav Birch and Philip Lindberg closed in. Birch forced a move that got him into second, and then Halder was left in a puddle where the traction wasn’t there for him to stop Lindberg getting by into third too.

The battle for second continued until the penultimate lap, when Lindberg passed Birch, while Halder followed up wins in races one and two with a fourth place in race three.

Nicolai Sylvest initially ran in third but couldn’t maintain that pace and faded to fifth after several battles, while Kenn Bach had to work hard to get past the defensively-driven Audi RS 3 LMS of Rene Povlsen to take sixth place.

The next TCR Denmark round takes place on August 6-7 in Copenhagen.