Photo: WTCR

Gilles Magnus fastest as track limits abuse dominates Motorsport Games practice

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Comtoyou Racing’s Gilles Magnus was fastest for Belgium in the first practice for the Motorsport Games’ Touring Car Cup, which was plagued by track limits issues.

Drivers were falling down the order as quickly as they rose up it on the timesheet as lap after lap was deleted, and Spain’s Isidro Callejas and Argentina’s Ignacio Montenegro managed to finish the session without any of their laps standing.

Callejas had been in third place when the chequered flag came out on the half-hour session, but he was dropped to the bottom of the order four minutes after the finish and the order was still changing two minutes after that due to deleted laps.

Magnus sat in first place for much of Friday practice, with his very first lap of the event standing as the early benchmark after his follow-up effort was deleted and so was Sergio Lopez’s in second place, meaning Magnus then had a gap of 5.75 seconds to Aaron Cameron.

Most drivers only did an installation lap before returning to the pits at first, and only after 10 minutes did they then go for flying laps. ALM Motorsport’s Jack Young, representing Ireland, demoted Magnus to second place with his first lap, a 2:13.425, and a swathe of deletions meant he led a group of only nine drivers with lap times to their name with the Netherlands’ Tom Coronel in second place.

After race control tried out the Full Course Yellow procedure, Magnus returned to the top by setting a 2:13.123 lap. Callejas rose to fourth at the same time, posting two laps good enough for the position before he had all his previous laps deleted and fell to last place again.

Next up is free practice two, starting at 12:20 CEST on Saturday.

Latvia’s Valters Zvideris inherited the position, until TCR South America racer Gabriel Müller Agrelo Lusquiños improved with three minutes to go. He was then shuffled down another place by Callejas, but moved back up to fifth with a 2:13.794 lap in the final minute. That then became fourth post-session once Callejas had his fastest lap deleted once more, and it also brought Lopez back into the top six.