The second Free Practice session at the Autodromo do Algarve once again saw a Comtoyou Racing Audi RS 3 LMS car set the fastest time, but it was a stunning pair of laps from TCR Europe debutant Kobe Pauwels that saw the Belgian teenager end the session on top of the timesheet, beating KUMHO TCR World Tour drivers Yann Ehrlacher and Néstor Girolami who were second and third respectively.

After the initial out lap, the first competitive lap time was a 1:53.074 from the Audi of Rob Huff (Audi Sport Team Comtoyou) with Lewis Brown (Volcano Motorsport) setting a time of 1:53.994 in another RS 3 LMS to go P2 and Norbert Michelisz P3 with a lap of 1:54.028 in a BRC Hyundai N Squadra Corse Elantra. Frédéric Vervisch then went P2 with a 1:52.772, but his teammate Huff quickly improved with a 1:52.550. After missing FP1, Cyan Racing’s Ma Qing Hua was immediately on the pace with a lap of 1:52.909 which put him P5 behind Michelisz’s teammate Mikel Azcona (1:52.806) while Yann Ehrlacher went fastest with a lap time of 1:52.210 in a Cyan Racing Lynk & Co 03.

Soon afterwards, Thed Björk in another Lynk & Co lapped in 1:52.759 to go P3 and Azcona improved with a time that was one-thousandths of a second ahead of Vervisch (1:52.771). The Spaniard then improved again on his next lap (1:52.746) to go third quickest ahead of Björk, before Vervisch pipped both of them with a 1:52.744, two-thousandths quicker than Azcona.

Halfway through the thirty-minute session, Ma Qing Hua set a time of 1:52.683 to take his turn at being in P3 with Tom Coronel (Comtoyou Audi) finally setting a respectable lap time of 1:53.097 to break into the top ten after languishing at the bottom end of the order for the first fifteen minutes. Santiago Urrutia, meanwhile, was in P7 briefly with a time of 1:52.908 until Kobe Pauwels set a stunning lap time of 1:52.197 to go P1 ahead of Ehrlacher and Huff. To prove that the lap was no fluke, Pauwels then went even faster on the next lap with a 1:52.149.

With a little over six minutes of the session left, Viktor Davidovski went P8 with a lap of 1:52.834 and so was the leading TCR Europe Diamond Trophy entrant. That soon became P9 when John Filippi went fifth fastest with a 1:52.707 and then Tom Coronel took over from Davidovski as the front-running Diamond Trophy competitor with a 1:52.685 that put him in P5 before Filippi improved on his next lap to go P3 with a lap of 1:52.515.

Just as in FP1, Néstor Girolami left it until very late in the session to set his best lap, with the ALM Motorsport Honda going P3 (1:52.444) with less than a minute remaining. After the chequered flag fell, Lewis Brown set his best lap of 1:53.018 to end the session in P13, with those thirteen drivers covered by just under nine-tenths of a second.

So Pauwels sprung the surprise of the day by going fastest in only his second official session in a TCR car, having made the move to Touring Car racing from rallycross. Ehrlacher was second and Girolami was third, with fourth-placed Filippi the second TCR Europe competitor on the leaderboard. Thed Björk was among a number of drivers to receive a Stop and Go penalty for repeated track limit infringements, with several others receiving warnings but escaping a penalty.

Kobe Pauwels (fastest): “I’m feeling good after FP2, of course, as this is my first year in circuit racing and first year in a TCR car. With such a competitive field in TCR Europe and the KUMHO World Tour it’s already a special feeling and then to top a session in front of all those iconic names in motorsport is quite incredible. We had some issues in FP1 which the team obviously solved perfectly and you can see from the result in FP2 that the team is really one big group all striving to work in the right direction and I’m really happy to be part of this amazing journey. Tomorrow we will see where we really are pace-wise, depending on whether everybody has already shown their full potential or not. I think we have a little bit more left, but not much!”

Top positions

1. Kobe Pauwels (Comtoyou Racing, Audi RS 3 LMS)  1:52.149

2. Yann Ehrlacher (Cyan Racing Lynk & Co, Lynk & Co 03 FL) 1:52.210

3. Néstor Girolami (ALM Motorsport, Honda Civic Type R FL5)  1:52.444

4. John Filippi (Comtoyou, Audi RS 3 LMS)  1:52.515

5. Rob Huff (Audi Sport Team Comtoyou, Audi RS 3 LMS)  1:52.550

Qualifying is scheduled to start at 09.50 local time tomorrow with Race 1 at 14.20. Race 2 is then scheduled for 11.30 on Sunday morning. Qualifying and both races will be streamed live on tcr-series.tv and the TCR TV app.