Santiago Urrutia completed a fruitful weekend in China for the Kumho FIA TCR World Tour event at Geely-owned Chengdu Tianfu International Circuit.
After having won yesterday’s Race 1 and finished third in this morning’s Race 2, the Uruguayan driver scored another victory in Race 3, the fifth for him in the current season. Urrutia led his teammate Yann Ehrlacher in another 1-2 finish for Geely Cyan Racing, with Jean-Karl Vernay third once again in a replica of Race 1 podium.
These results helped him to eat 28 points out of Mikel Azcona’s lead in the standings, with the Spaniard who now is just 23 points ahead.
Norbert Michelisz is still third, but his gap to his teammate has grown to 51 points, while Ehrlacher is only 19 points behind the Hungarian.
Urrutia started from the pole, based on points scored so far this weekend, and led ahead of Ehrlacher into T1, while Aurélien Comte managed to pass Vernay. Behind them, Azcona settled into fifth, while Michelisz lost two positions as he was passed by both Ma Qing Hua and Thed Björk. Björk made contact with Michelisz in the process, and the incident has been referred to the stewards.
While the two Geely Cyan Racing drivers began to pull away from Comte and Vernay, the CUPRA pair swapped positions on lap 8, with Vernay showing more speed. Vernay, however, didn’t have the pace to close the gap on Urrutia and Ehrlacher, who had a comfortable run to the finish.
Vernay completed the podium, while Comte backed off on the last lap and let Azcona past to reduce the amount of compensation weight he needs to carry next weekend at Zhejiang.
Bayern Yip Wai Hei scored his first Guest Star Trophy win with ninth, while his Evolve Racing teammate Lo Sze Ho had to pit with a technical issue early on; Diego Moran claimed his second victory of the weekend in TCR Asia
Race 3
- Santiago Urrutia (Geely Cyan Racing, Geely Preface), 22 laps
- Yann Ehrlacher (Geely Cyan Racing, Geely Preface), 0.551
- Jean-Karl Vernay (SP Compétition, CUPRA Leon VZ), 6.812
Guest Star Trophy: Bayern Yip Wai Hei (Evolve Racing, Hyundai Elantra N)
Championship points
- M. Azcona, 373 pts.; 2. S. Urrutia, 350; 3. N. Michelisz, 322
Picture: WSC/Paddocker
