Aurélien Comte led a historic 1-2 finish for SP Compétition in the second race of the Kumho FIA TCR World Tour at Chengdu Tianfu International Circuit, winning from teammate Jean-Karl Vernay to score his first victory since Zhuzhou last year.
Behind the CUPRA cars of the French pair, Santiago Urrutia made further headway with third place, which helped him to close further the gap in the standings to the leader Mikel Azcona whose advantage has been reduced to 33 points.
Azcona’s teammate Norbert Michelisz remains third, ten further points adrift, with Yann Ehrlacher following in fourth position 75 points off the leader.
Lo Sze Ho finished ninth overall and clinched the Guest Star Trophy, while Marcus Cheong Man Hei was the winner in TCR Asia.
Moran started from pole position on the reversed grid, with Lo alongside, but they both made a slow start, allowing Thed Björk to slice between them and take the lead into T1 ahead of the fast-starting pair of Comte and Vernay. Urrutia made a strong start from P8 on the grid and moved up to fourth, battling ahead of Michelisz.
The top three began to break away, with Björk being chased by Comte and Vernay. Comte made his move at the end of lap 5, taking the lead across the line, before Vernay slipstreamed past the pair of them to go at the front.
Team orders came into play at both SP Compétition and Geely Cyan Racing. Vernay, who is not in title contention after missing three events, handed the lead to Comte on lap 12, while Björk had already let Urrutia through.
Comte won by less than a second ahead of Vernay, while the two CUPRA cars finished over five seconds clear of third-placed Urrutia; a thrilling battle for the seventh place saw Azcona keeping Ehrlacher at bay throughout the race.
Lo benefitted from Moran’s pit stop to replace a tyre after he had hit a tyre stack, which promoted the Hong Konger as the winner of the Guest Star Trophy, but also Cheong as the winner in TCR Asia.
Urrutia will start Race 3 on pole position based on the points scored across the weekend so far, with Ehrlacher second, while Vernay and Comte will fill the second row of the grid.
The final race starts at 14:10 local time (08:10 CEST).
Race 2
- Aurélien Comte (SP Compétition, CUPRA Leon VZ), 22 laps
- Jean-Karl Vernay (SP Compétition, CUPRA Leon VZ), 0.770
- Santiago Urrutia (Geely Cyan Racing, Geely Preface), 5.938
Guest Star Trophy: Lo Sze Ho (Evolve Racing, Hyundai Elantra N)
Championship points
- M. Azcona, 353 pts.; 2. S. Urrutia, 320; 3. N. Michelisz, 310
Picture: WSC/Paddocker
