Santiago Urrutia leads Cyan Racing lockout of top places in TCR World Tour FP2
Santiago Urrutia led a Cyan Racing lockout of the top three places in the second practice session for the TCR World Tour and TCR South America at El Pinar.
It was a drama-free half-hour of running, unlike shakedown on Friday and first practice on Saturday morning, although Urrutia had an engine issue beforehand that meant he was late to start and Squadra Martino’s Néstor Girolami missed the first 20 minutes.
Cyan’s Ma Qing Hua laid down the pace at first, a 1:24.115, and BRC Racing’s Norbert Michelisz knocked two seconds off that benchmark next time by, with TCR South America points leader Ignacio Montenegro the only driver to then get within a second of Michelisz.
But with a disruption-free session, there was plenty of time for people to improve as the track conditions improved.
Comtoyou Racing’s Rob Huff, Hua and his team-mate Thed Björk broke into the 1:21s after nine minutes, then Yann Ehrlacher put Cyan back on top with a 1:21.545. Björk and Hua bettered that with their next laps, and at the session’s halfway point Michelisz went second fastest to create a top three covered by 0.026 seconds.
Björk pitted but once he returned to track he had more pace in hand and set a 1:21.007. Urrutia got within 0.258s of the new benchmark as he set only his second lap of the session with 11 minutes remaining, and next time improved by 0.135 but Björk lowered the pace to 1:20.518.
Urrutia then pitted, leaving it to others to respond to Björk in the final six minutes. Hua and Comtoyou’s Frédéric Vervisch both lapped sub-1:21, and Ehrlacher rose to fifth with a 1:21.142.
With three minutes to go Urrutia was back on track, and improving once more. His first flying lap once back out put him on top by 0.108s, a margin he would hold to the chequered flag.
Having left it very late to put a time on the board, Girolami wasted no time in showing his true pace as his second lap put him in sixth place. But then he headed straight back to the pits.
His first lap back out was not an improvement, leaving him sitting in 10th, but his next lap set just before the finish put him in fourth place and within half a second of Urrutia.
That demoted Vervisch and Ehrlacher to fifth and sixth, with first practice pacesetter BRC’s Mikel Azcona lapping four tenths of a second slower than he had earlier in the day and finishing second practice in seventh place.
PMO Motorsport’s Rafael Suzuki was the fastest TCR South America driver in ninth, 0.922s off the pace.
Qualifying starts at 16:10 local time/21:10 CEST today.
