Santiago Urrutia tops both Pau practice sessions as team-mates hit misfortune

Santiago Urrutia topped both of Saturday’s free practice sessions for the season opener of the FIA World Touring Car Cup on the streets of Pau, as his Cyan Racing team-mates suffered from mechanical dramas.

In the morning session, Uruguayan Urrutia emerged as the quickest driver on a circuit he had never previously raced on, edging out team-mate and reigning champion Yann Ehrlacher by almost half a second with his lap of 1 minute 20.160 seconds.

Urrutia then went marginally faster in second practice – a session in which his team-mates Ehrlacher and Yvan Muller both experienced driveshaft problems on their Lynk & Co cars. Thed Björk had also earlier suffered from driveshaft issues in first practice.

Néstor Girolami was the fastest of the Hondas in first practice in third, and the Münnich Motorsport driver also enjoyed a brief spell at the top of the times in second practice, before he was pipped by Urrutia and, later, Hyundai’s Mikel Azcona.

Azcona was thus second fastest in Free Practice 2, just 0.079 seconds adrift of Urrutia’s lap.

Having been fourth fastest in first practice, Cyan Racing’s Muller completed only 11 laps in the second session – 15 minutes shorter than the first at just half an hour – leaving him down in 16^th after his driveshaft troubles.

BRC Racing’s Norbert Michelisz was the best Hyundai driver in FP1, the only other driver within a second of the pace, and he was seventh in second practice, despite finding three tenths of a second to actually be closer to the top time.

After none of the four Audis made it into the top ten in first practice, Comtoyou Racing’s Tom Coronel and Gilles Magnus improved in second practice to end the session in sixth and eighth respectively.

The late deal for Zengő Motorsport to field two CUPRAs on the 2022 grid meant no pre-season testing for either Rob Huff or Dániel Nagy, which showed in practice.

Huff was 13^th in first practice, almost two seconds off the pace, before slipping to 15^th in second practice. His team-mate Nagy was behind him on both occasions.

Notable was the fact that the best lap time of the day thus far, Urrutia’s time in second practice, was over 1.8 seconds faster than the qualifying lap record for the WTCC set back in 2007.

A relatively late schedule for the track action on Saturday means that qualifying gets underway at 17:30 CEST (16:30 BST) ahead of the opening races of the season on Sunday.

Free Practice 1 results

POS	NO	NAT	DRIVER	ENTRANT	CAR	LAPS	TIME	GAP
1	12		Santiago URRUTIA	Cyan Performance Lynk & Co	Lynk & Co 03 TCR	21	1:20.160	–
2	68		Yann EHRLACHER	Cyan Racing Lynk & Co	Lynk & Co 03 TCR	24	1:20.649	0.489
3	29		Néstor GIROLAMI	ALL-INKL.COM Münnich Motorsport	Honda Civic TCR	24	1:20.827	0.667
4	100		Yvan MULLER	Cyan Racing Lynk & Co	Lynk & Co 03 TCR	24	1:20.858	0.698
5	5		Norbert MICHELISZ	BRC Hyundai N Squadra Corse	Hyundai Elantra N TCR	21	1:20.969	0.809
6	96		Mikel AZCONA	BRC Hyundai N Squadra Corse	Hyundai Elantra N TCR	20	1:21.173	1.013
7	86		Esteban GUERRIERI	ALL-INKL.COM Münnich Motorsport	Honda Civic TCR	24	1:21.231	1.071
8	11		Thed BJÖRK	Cyan Performance Lynk & Co	Lynk & Co 03 TCR	18	1:21.392	1.232
9	9		Attila TASSI	Liqui MolyTeam Engstler	Honda Civic TCR	24	1:21.608	1.448
10	55		MA Qing Hua	Cyan Performance Lynk & Co	Lynk & Co 03 TCR	23	1:21.809	1.649
11	17		Nathanaël BERTHON	COMTOYOU DHL TEAM AUDI SPORT	Audi RS3 LMS	24	1:21.883	1.723
12	16		Gilles MAGNUS	COMTOYOU TEAM AUDI SPORT	Audi RS3 LMS	24	1:21.999	1.839
13	79		Rob HUFF	ZENGÖ MOTORSPORT SERVICES KFT	Cupra Leon Competición TCR	24	1:22.130	1.970
14	99		Dániel NAGY	ZENGÖ MOTORSPORT SERVICES KFT	Cupra Leon Competición TCR	24	1:22.296	2.136
15	18		Tiago MONTEIRO	Liqui MolyTeam Engstler	Honda Civic TCR	20	1:22.330	2.170
16	25		Mehdi BENNANI	COMTOYOU TEAM AUDI SPORT	Audi RS3 LMS	18	1:22.492	2.332
17	33		Tom CORONEL	COMTOYOU DHL TEAM AUDI SPORT	Audi RS3 LMS	25	1:22.548	2.388
18	64		Eric CAYROLLE	COMTOYOU TEAM AUDI SPORT	Audi RS3 LMS	23	1:24.750	4.590

Free Practice 2 results

POS	NO	NAT	DRIVER	ENTRANT	CAR	LAPS	TIME	GAP
1	12		Santiago URRUTIA	Cyan Performance Lynk & Co	Lynk & Co 03 TCR	14	1:20.125	–
2	96		Mikel AZCONA	BRC Hyundai N Squadra Corse	Hyundai Elantra N TCR	15	1:20.204	0.079
3	29		Néstor GIROLAMI	ALL-INKL.COM Münnich Motorsport	Honda Civic TCR	15	1:20.308	0.183
4	68		Yann EHRLACHER	Cyan Racing Lynk & Co	Lynk & Co 03 TCR	7	1:20.376	0.251
5	11		Thed BJÖRK	Cyan Performance Lynk & Co	Lynk & Co 03 TCR	17	1:20.612	0.487
6	33		Tom CORONEL	COMTOYOU DHL TEAM AUDI SPORT	Audi RS3 LMS	15	1:20.627	0.502
7	5		Norbert MICHELISZ	BRC Hyundai N Squadra Corse	Hyundai Elantra N TCR	14	1:20.670	0.545
8	16		Gilles MAGNUS	COMTOYOU TEAM AUDI SPORT	Audi RS3 LMS	14	1:20.792	0.667
9	86		Esteban GUERRIERI	ALL-INKL.COM Münnich Motorsport	Honda Civic TCR	14	1:20.811	0.686
10	9		Attila TASSI	Liqui MolyTeam Engstler	Honda Civic TCR	15	1:20.990	0.865
11	17		Nathanaël BERTHON	COMTOYOU DHL TEAM AUDI SPORT	Audi RS3 LMS	16	1:21.055	0.930
12	18		Tiago MONTEIRO	Liqui MolyTeam Engstler	Honda Civic TCR	16	1:21.123	0.998
13	55		MA Qing Hua	Cyan Performance Lynk & Co	Lynk & Co 03 TCR	14	1:21.197	1.072
14	25		Mehdi BENNANI	COMTOYOU TEAM AUDI SPORT	Audi RS3 LMS	16	1:21.294	1.169
15	79		Rob HUFF	ZENGÖ MOTORSPORT SERVICES KFT	Cupra Leon Competición TCR	14	1:21.359	1.234
16	100		Yvan MULLER	Cyan Racing Lynk & Co	Lynk & Co 03 TCR	11	1:21.709	1.584
17	99		Dániel NAGY	ZENGÖ MOTORSPORT SERVICES KFT	Cupra Leon Competición TCR	16	1:21.941	1.816
18	64		Eric CAYROLLE	COMTOYOU TEAM AUDI SPORT	Audi RS3 LMS	16	1:23.413	3.288