Jenson Brickley was circumspect after being shuffled out of the lead and into eighth place in the second race of the Kumho FIA TCR World Tour opening weekend at Misanot, fighting to keep back the faster cars from Geely Cyan Racing and BRC Hyundai N Squadra Corse.
The 22-year-old British driver was making his world-level debut and had started from the reversed grid pole. From the first lap he was being challenged hard by Ma Qing Hua who was looking for and would go on win the first race for Geely. At the end of the second lap, Ma passed Brickley, but the ALM Motorsport driver retook the lead with a dive back down the inside at the final corner and would hold on for another four laps before he eventually was passed by Ma and then the following group of cars.
“I had a good start and had a good first six laps, but the Geely and Hyundai cars had a lot of pace and were just going for gaps that weren’t there,” said Brickley. “If I didn’t move out of the way I would have got crashed out, so I had no choice but to let them past. Overall it was a good race, it’s a shame we dropped back so far, but when you look at the overall result we were ‘P3 of the rest’ behind Comte and Guerrieri, who both got past me on a triple-overtake with Urrutia’s Geely at a fast section. That’s a reasonable way of looking at it, as I don’t think it’s possible for us to compete with the other two at the moment.”
Picture: WSC/Fastclick
