Franco Girolami, driving a Comtoyou Racing Audi RS 3 LMS TCR, set the fastest time in the first Free Practice session at the Circuit Barcelona-Catalunya ahead of the final two races of the 2022 TCR Europe season. Jack Young was second fastest in a Halder Motorsport Honda Civic Type R while Girolami’s teammate Tom Coronel was third.

The half-hour session saw yellow flags being waved within a minute or so of the start, when Samuel Sládečka went off at Turn 1. A Full Course Yellow was then imposed while the Hyundai was recovered.

Once the session resumed, the first competitive lap time was set by John Filippi (1:55.789) ahead of Frederic Vervisch (1:55.844) before championship leader Girolami set a 1:54.713 and Pepe Oriola went P2 with a 1:55.368. Vervisch then improved on his next lap with a 1:55.077 and Isidro Callejas went third fastest with a lap of 1:55.101.

With around ten minutes gone, Nicola Baldan went P2, one-thousandths of a second faster than Vervisch, then Oriola improved with a 1:54.674 to go P1. A few minutes later, Tom Coronel set a time of 1:54.537 to top the timesheet ahead of Oriola and Girolami at the halfway point of the session. Then, with around fourteen minutes left on the clock, the session was red-flagged when Vervisch and Marco Butti both stopped with unrelated technical problems and, when Butti’s car couldn’t be moved, the countdown clock was stopped.

The session resumed with just under eleven minutes remaining with Jack Young going fastest on his first flying lap after the restart with a 1:54.245. Josh Files, who’d had a transponder problem in the early part of the session, went P7 with a lap of 1:55.087 and Callejas improved his best lap with a 1:54.695 to go P5 behind Oriola. Girolami then went fastest once again with a 1:54.203 before Mike Halder set a 1:54.766 to go P6 behind Callejas. There were no further improvements among the top six and so Girolami was able to get his weekend off to the best possible start.

Twenty-two cars took part in the session following confirmation that Target Competition’s Felice Jelmini won’t take part in the weekend. In addition, Aggressive Team Italia driver Levente Losonczy isn’t able to compete in Barcelona after picking up an injury in Monza.

Franco Girolami (fastest): “This was a very good start to the weekend; it’s always very important to start like this. I am very confident with the car but I know we have some things we can improve, for sure. Carrying 30kgs, I expected a little bit less, maybe to be in the top five, because there are a lot of very good drivers with less weight than me, so to start like this is amazing. Okay, this is only the beginning but it’s always better to start like this. In Free Practice, you never know if another driver uses new tyres or not. Tomorrow, Qualifying will be at the same time and with roughly the same temperatures, so I think we will be quite okay.”

Top positions

1.     Franco Girolami (Comtoyou Racing, Audi RS 3 LMS)   1:54.203

2.     Jack Young (Halder Motorsport, Honda Civic Type R)   1:54.245

3.     Tom Coronel (Comtoyou Racing, Audi RS 3 LMS)   1:54.537

4.     Pepe Oriola (Aggressive Team Italia, Hyundai Elantra N)   1:54.674

5.     Isidro Callejas (Volcano Motorsport, CUPRA Leon Competición)   1:54.695

6.     Mike Halder (Halder Motorsport, Honda Civic Type R)   1:54.766

Free Practice 2 is scheduled to start at 15.05 CEST this afternoon and live timing will be available via the TCR Europe website. The two-stage Qualifying session and Race 1 take place tomorrow with Race 2 on Sunday. Qualifying and both races will be streamed live on the series’ social media pages and on the TCR Portal.