Julien Briché has been given a five-second penalty for an incident with Marco Butti on the sixth lap of today’s Race 1. The French driver who had finished seventh was then dropped out of the top ten, down to 12th and this also affected both the championship standings and the grid for tomorrow’s Race 2.
Briché was deemed to have performed an unsafe rejoin at the first corner after a track limits infringement and made contact with Butti’s Honda, which in turn dislodged the car’s intercooler and would stop on track causing the race’s only safety car seven laps later.
The decision promoted Ruben Volt to seventh, now the best-placed of the TCR Europe contingent, while Felipe Fernández’s promotion to ninth from tenth means he now moves from pole to outside of the front row for the top ten reversed grid for Race 2.
Promoted to tenth in his place is SP Compétition’s John Filippi who will start from the pole position.
With Esteban Guerrieri moved up to eighth, the Honda driver’s gap to the new championship leader Santiago Urrutia is now just two points.
Picture: WSC/Fastclick
