Aurélien Comte claims lights to flag win in Zhuzhou opener
Aurélien Comte dominated an uneventful first FIA TCR World Tour race at Zhuzhou, beting title contender Thed Björk by a comfortable margin.
The SP Competition driver started from pole, made a solid start and never looked back.
Lynk & Co Cyan Racing driver Björk made a strong start as well but did not get close enough to Comte heading into Turn 1.
Björk then sat alone in second place with reigning champion Norbert Michelisz at a steady one-second distance in third place throughout the race.
Reigning Supercars Champion Will Brown was one of the few drivers making progress in the race, getting past Ma Qing Hua for fourth on lap two.
The move allowed Yann Ehrlacher to get past Ma as well and the reigning FIA TCR World Tour champion then set his sights on Brown in the battle for fourth.
It was not until the final lap that Ehrlacher launched an attack on Brown and briefly got past for fourth, only for Brown to repass and cling onto the position.
Comte won the race with a margin of three seconds over Björk while Michelisz was five seconds adrift in third.
Brown finished fourh ahead of Ehrlacher while local hero Ma was a distant sixth.
Mikel Azcona came home in seventh while title contender Esteban Guerrieri lost further points down in eighth place.
Néstor Girolami finished ninth while Santiago Urrutia clinched tenth and pole position for the reversed grid of race two.
Björk took another chunk out of Cyan Racing team-mate Ehrlacher’s points lead, with 27 points separating the two ahead of Race 2 which starts at 12:00 local time/05:00 CET on Sunday.
