Roberto Colciago had never seen the track before taking part in this weekend’s TCR International Series event in Malaysia, with the Italian going on to take pole position for the first race later today.
The new Italian Touring Car champion was the pace-setter in Friday morning’s qualifying session, despite having only had Thursday’s single free practice session to acclimatise himself with the Sepang International Circuit.
The Target Competition racer is a one-off guest entry this weekend, but he still managed to beat Craft-Bamboo Racing’s Pepe Oriola to the top time, despite the Spaniard having previous experience of the circuit.
“I had never seen the track before I arrived here yesterday,” said Colciago. “The timetable is very tight with only one practice session and I didn’t know the car, so it was a very good result and so I must thank Target Competition, JAS Motorsport and the mechanics for doing such a good job.
“Yesterday, I spent the first part of the practice session learning the track and so I was a long way off going fast. We thought we had a problem with the front of the car so we fixed that and I learnt the track and so we are very happy with the result.”
Colciago becomes the fourth driver in TCR International history to take pole for his début, following on from Nicki Thiim, Rob Huff and Harald Proczyk.
Race one takes place at 17:45 local time (10:45 BST, 11:45 CEST) and will be streamed live online.