The second Free Practice session was topped by the Audi RS3 LMS of Stefano Comini, as the reigning champion set the fastest lap of 1:26.370 halfway through the 30-minute session.
In the first fifteen minutes the trio of Lukoil Craft-Bamboo SEAT cars had consistently filled the top-three positions with brief interruptions from the Opel Astra cars of Thomas Jäger and Mat’o Homola.
Pepe Oriola posted a provisional fastest lap of 1:26.384 that was eventually beaten by Comini by only 14 thousandths, but eventually remained the second fastest. Behind him were his teammates Daniel Lloyd (1:26.397) and James Nash (1:26.510).
Jean-Karl Vernay only joined in the second half of the session and heaved himself up to fifth (1:26.585), ahead of Roberto Colciago (1:26.589) and Gianni Morbidelli(1:26.591) who appeared in the top positions for the first time so far in the event.
Attila Tassi drove his new car to eighth place (1:26.623), while Jens Reno Møller (1:26.718) and Stian Paulsen (1:26.720) impressively made the top-ten. Unfortunately Paulsen went off at Turn 10 five minutes from the end and hit the Armco barrier.
Homola also stopped on the track, but because of a broken driveshaft.
Once again the gaps were tiny, with 19 cars in nine tenths.
Duncan Ende skipped the session as the Icarus Motorsports crew was working to fix the damage from the Practice 1 incident. He will take part in the Qualifying.
Comini said: “We worked on the set-up and it was clearly very good. I tried driving alone and with a slipstream to compare the two. I really like the big corner (Turn 9) but you need to have a lot of respect for it. I had a big drift there, which wasn’t so cool! It’s all very close, so Qualifying and the races will be very interesting.”
Qualifying will come next at 15:00 local time (live streaming at www.tcr-series.com and www.tcr-series.tv).
