HANSON FASTEST ON DAY 1 OF TCR ACTION
Jay Hanson was the fastest man on the opening day of TCR Australia Series action at the Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit, over 0.35s clear of the rest of the field.
In his new Audi RS3 TCR machine Hanson set a 1m 36.204s time in the morning’s opening session, and despite improvements from others in practice 2 he could not be knocked off the top spot.
While practice 1 commenced at 11.45am, practice 2 took place in the heat of the day and meant that a large majority of the field did not improve on their fastest time from the first session.
Hanson ended the day 0.365s clear of Peugeot 308 driver Jordan Cox and Honda Civic Type R driver Fabian Coulthard.
Dylan O’Keeffe ended the day in fourth position and like Hanson set his best time in practice 1, 0.12s faster than his teammate Aaron Cameron who made it three Peugeots in the top five.
Alfa Romeo driver Michael Caruso, Hyundai’s Josh Buchan, former TCR Australia Series winner Will Brown, Tony D’Alberto and Ben Bargwanna rounded out the top 10.
Nathan Morcom ended up in 11th and was the last driver within a second of Hanson’s time.
Liam McAdam was 12th ahead of the returning Michael Clemente, Kody Garland in the Renault Megane and Bailey Sweeny rounded out the top 15.
Iain McDougall, James Moffat, Brad Shiels, TCR race winner Zac Soutar, Lachlan Mineeff and Braydan Willmington rounded out the expanded 21 car TCR Australia field.
In what is an incredibly competitive field, 19 of the 21 cars were separated by less than 1.8s.
Fortunately, there were no major incidents throughout the two 30-minute practice sessions.
All the TCR action can be live streamed exclusively on Stan Sport from 11am tomorrow.
