Just like yesterday in Qualifying, Yann Ehrlacher led a Lynk & Co Cyan Racing 1-2 in the first race of the Kumho FIA TCR World Tour at Marrakech, winning from teammate Santiago Urrutia, while Hyundai’s Norbert Michelisz completed the podium.
Ehrlacher made a good start ahead of Urrutia, with the two BRC Hyundai N Squadra Corse Elantra cars of Michelisz and Néstor Girolami holding third and fourth ahead of the Volcano Motorsport Audi of John Filippi. Marco Butti had a bad start from P12 on the grid and dropped to the back. For the first part of the race, Girolami was defending fourth hard against a chasing Filippi, but eventually the French driver fell back towards the chasing third Hyundai of Mikel Azcona.
GOAT Racing Honda driver Dušan Borković’s race ended on lap 10 after an incident with Sami Taoufik at T1, with the Moroccan driver working his way forward from his 14th place in qualifying in his Volcano Audi. Butti also pitted with a technical problem four laps later.
With 15 laps to go, the Cyan Racing Lynk & Co cars of Ma Qing Hua and Thed Björk swapped eighth place between them, and Björk started to close on Esteban Guerrieri’s Honda ahead. On lap 25, Björk dived down the inside and grabbed seventh place off Guerrieri. A lap later and Ma attempted the same move when Guerrieri left a gap, but both ran wide and allowed Taoufik’s Audi through. Taoufik and Ma then made side-to-side contact on the straight as the Moroccan completed the pass for seventh.
Both Björk and Taoufik were handed five-second time penalties by the stewards, while Ma’s pass was deemed to require no further action, which promoted him back to seventh at the the finish. On lap 33, Azcona made the final move of the race, passing Filippi into Turn 7 and claiming a 3-4-5 for Hyundai, but Lynk & Co scored maximum points with a 1-2 for Ehrlacher and Urrutia.
Michelisz continues to lead the standings, just nine points ahead of Ehrlacher going into Race 2, which gets underway at 15:30 local time.
Ehrlacher: “It wasn’t easy you know, I had good support from Santi behind me to play clever the whole race. The tyres don’t last very long in this heat so we had to save them as long as we could. It wasn’t easy, 36 laps is long around here with 65 degrees in the car, but we’ve scored good points.”
Marrakech – Race 1
- Yann Ehrlacher (Lynk & Co Cyan Racing, Lynk & Co 03 FL), 36 laps
- Santiago Urrutia (Lynk & Co Cyan Racing, Lynk & Co 03 FL), 0.389
- Norbert Michelisz (BRC Hyundai N Squadra Corse, Hyundai Elantra N), 1.086
Championship points
- N. Michelisz, 91 pts; 2. Y. Ehrlacher, 82; 3. S. Urrutia, 74
Further information and images @ www.fiatcrworldtour.com
Schedule
Saturday – Race 2: 15:30 (16:30 CEST) live streaming
Picture: WSC/Fastclick
