Santiago Urrutia and Dušan Borković topped the two free practice sessions held ahead of Saturday’s qualifying session at Interlagos for the jopint event of Kumho FIA TCR World Tour with TCR South America and TCR Brasil.
In the morning’s session Urrutia led the way as he had done in Friday evening’s shakedown in his Cyan Racing Lynk & Co, going just three-thousandths of a second faster than early pace-setter Esteban Guerrieri’s GOAT Racing Honda Civic. Behind them was the next best Lynk & Co of Ma Qing Hua, while title contender Yann Ehrlacher set a late improvement to go fourth, moving ahead of Borković.
Rafael Suzuki was the best-placed of the TCR South America contingent, with the PMO Racing Peugeot driver sixth quickest, just under seven-tenths away from Urrutia’s time. The BRC Hyundai trio appeared to be struggling, with championship leader Norbert Michelisz the best-placed in tenth, nine-tenths from the lead.
The pace was slightly slower in the warmer afternoon session, with Ehrlacher setting the early pace before the Volcano Motorsport Audi of John Filippi took over at the top of the time sheets with a pair of times in the low 1:43s. The session was red-flagged with just under five minutes to go when Fabio Casagrande’s Squadra Martino Honda stopped at Turn 5, while there was just enough time for a last few improvements, with Borković managing to fastest of all in his Honda with a time of 1:42.953, with team-mate Guerrieri improving to third. The Hyundai cars showed better pace, with both Michelisz and Mikel Azcona setting the same time to the thousandth of a second to finish the session fourth and fifth. The best-placed TCR South America driver was Juan Manuel Casella, who went sixth quickest in his Squadra Martino Honda right at the end of the session.
The next session is qualifying at 15:00 local time (20:00 CEST).
Picture: TCR South America/Duda Bairros
