BRC Hyundai N Squadra Corse drivers Néstor Girolami and Mikel Azcona led the first two practice sessions at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, as the KUMHO FIA TCR World Tour makes its US debut this weekend.
Girolami led the 30-minute session held early morning at 8:15 local time, leading a trio of his Hyundai teammates, while Azcona upped the pace in the second session held three hours later, with the Spanish driver setting the best time of the day of 1:28.746 in the first ten minutes of the session.
Times were close at the top, with Lynk & Co Cyan Racing’s Thed Björk just 57-thousandths of a second behind, and Azcona’s teammate Norbert Michelisz making a late improvement to go third quickest, also within a tenth of the fastest time; Ma Qing Hua’s Lynk & Co rounded out the top four. The best-placed of the GOAT Racing Honda cars was Esteban Guerrieri, seventh quickest, just under half a second down. John Filippi was the quickest of the Audi contingent in 11th position for Volcano Motorsport.
The Bryan Herta Autosport Hyundai cars of Mark Wilkins and Harry Gottsacker found improved pace after working on the set-up to adapt to the KUMHO tyres which they’re racing on for the first time, finishing the session 13th and 14th, 1.7 and 2.2 seconds off the pace respectively.
Megan Tomlinson was 14th in the second Volcano Motorsport Audi, 3.1 seconds down, while Riley Pegram, making her competitive TCR debut, was next in her first-generation Audi RS 3.
Ahead of practice, it was confirmed that the two Lynk & Co Cyan Racing entries of Yann Ehrlacher and Santiago Urrutia will have 12-place grid penalties for Race 1 for engine changes; Ehrlacher’s penalty will add to his existing three-place penalty for an incident in Morocco which will put him last on the grid.
The next session is qualifying at 16:25 local time (22:25 CEST).
