Slovakia’s Matej Homola topped Touring Car Cup’s red flag-interrupted second practice session at Vallelunga this afternoon ahead of tomorrow’s qualifying session and first race.
A second stoppage, following Salem Alnusif’s off earlier in the 30-minute session, curtailed FP2 by two minutes and prevented several more contenders from improving. However, by then Homola had already stamped his authority on proceedings by setting the fastest time of the weekend so far: 1m40.692s.
That was enough to lower Tom Coronel’s earlier benchmark by two tenths after the Dutchman initially claimed top spot following the first red flag.
Gilles Magnus was the only other driver to dip below 1m41s. The Belgian finished less than a tenth shy of Coronel and almost 0.3s clear of John Filippi (France), whose Cupra joined Hyundai, Honda and Audi inside the top-four.
Jessica Backman would have almost certainly improved without aborting her fastest lap but still finished a solid fifth. The Swede beat Kahia Faine (New Zealand) and Luca Engstler (Germany) who finished seven tenths down on his FP1 benchmark.
Dusan Kouril finished eighth, but caused the second red flag when his Team Czech Republic Hyundai lost a wheel.
Touring Car Cup’s qualifying session and opening race are both live on fiamotorsportgames.com tomorrow from 08:30 CET.