Eric Gené wins safety car interrupted first Barcelona race
Eric Gené headed the first TCR Spain race of the Barcelona season finale from lights-to-flag despite two safety car sessions while Mike Halder secured his second title.
The Monlau Motorsport duo of Gené and Jenson Brickley started from the front row and Gené claimed the lead as the lights went out while Halder managed to snatch second place from Brickley from fourth on the grid.
But Cupra driver Brickley was quick to retake second place from Halder (Honda) before the end of the first lap.
Contact between SP Competition team-mates Giovanni Scamardi and Sandro Pelatti on the main straight at the start saw the former spinning into the barriers, bringing the safety car out as both drivers retired from the race.
The race restarted with 14 minutes left, but only briefly as Audi driver Sebastien Thome spun into the gravel before the field was released.
The second restart came with eight minutes left of the race, spawning a hard fight for fifth place between Adam Shepherd and Sten-Dorian Piirimagi.
Honda driver Piirimagi made a late dive on Shepherd at La Caixa, resulting in contact between the two and enabled Michael Markussen to sneak past both of them for fifth place.
ALM Motorsport driver Piirimagi fought back to retake fifth a lap later as Shepherd was able to recover from eighth place past Steven Laidlaw to seventh.
Piirimagi received a drive-through penalty for the incident with Shepherd, but the Estonian driver ignored the penalty and was disqualified from the race.
Gene won the race with half a second ahead of Brickley, with the Honda duo of Halder and Felipe Fernandez in third and fourth respectively.
Shepherd fought his way back to finish fifth ahead of Area Motorsport driver Sam Laidlaw. René Povlsen and Steven Laidlaw rounded off the top eight.
The final race of the season finale starts at 10:50 CET on Sunday.
