Photo: TCR South America

Tiago Pernía storms to pole position at Curvelo

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Honda YPF Racing driver Tiago Pernía claimed an strong pole position at Curvelo, host of the seventh round of the 2025 TCR South America season.

Leonardo Reis (Cupra) went off the track with four minutes remaining on the clock, but it didn’t stop the W2 Pro GP driver from leading the Q1 session ahead of Leonel Pernía and Raphael Reis.

Honda driver Nelson Piquet Jr. was the first to establish a reference lap-time in the Q2, closely followed by his team-mates Leonel and Tiago Pernía. Fabián Yannantuoni (Lynk & Co) sat in fourth place, with Pedri Cardoso (Peugeot) right behind, followed by the Reis brothers.

Tiago Pernía improved in the final stages of the session to steal the top spot with a lap time of 1:23.504, 0.158 seconds ahead of Piquet. The Brazilian partly improved on his last flying lap, but aborted the attempt returning to the pits.

Leonel Pernía was third, 0.192 seconds off the pace, ahead of Raphael Reis and Peugeot’s Genaro Rasetto, half-a-second adrift.

Yannatuoni was sixth, beating Honda’s Mariano Pernía by just one-hundredth of a second. Cardoso could only manage eighth place, six-tenths off the pace, followed by Lynk & Co driver Juan Ángel Rosso. Leonardo Reis completed the top ten, seven-tenths behind Tiago Pernía.

“It’s very good to score a pole position in the TCR, and do it here in Brazil, my first time in a very demanding track,” said Tiago Pernía. “I have scored important points for the TCR South America and TCR Brazil, I will seek a podium tomorrow and continue scoring points.

The TCR South America field returns to the track on Sunday for Race 1 at 09:40 local time (14:40 CEST).