Defending champion scored a sensational second win of the season
BRC Hyundai N Squadra Corse leaves Brazil victorious as Norbert Michelisz held his nerve to win a tense second Kumho FIA TCR World Tour race at Interlagos – Sao Paulo’s famous Autódromo José Carlos Pace circuit.
Michelisz’s masterclass tested all of his resolve, but he was inch-perfect in his delivery – first leading from pole, then negotiating a safety car restart, before later resisting intense pressure from a trio of rival cars led initially by Ma Qing Hua. All while saddled with 30kg of compensation weight, too.
What looked like a comfortable winning margin of 2.618 seconds was by no means reflective of the demands Michelisz had been under in the 30-minute plus one lap reversed-grid race – 30 “very long minutes!”, as Hyundai Motorsport Circuit Racing Project Manager Julien Moncet put it – but it was a significant result for the Hungarian, who landed his second victory of the season.
Little wonder, then, that the reigning Kumho FIA TCR World Tour champion described this as “one of the best races” of his storied touring car career.
“There was a lot of pressure,” said Michelisz. “It was not just all about pushing 100 per cent, it was about pushing without making any mistakes and also looking after the tyres.”
“I’m very happy and very proud that I managed it.”
It was an important response too in the face of increased pressure in the drivers’ standings. Now past the halfway point of the 2024 season, Michelisz leads the way – as he has done since the very start of the campaign – but the 10 points he made up on race one winner Esteban Guerrieri have added a little more margin to his advantage, which now stands at 15 points.
If this first part of a South American double-header represented something of a homecoming for Argentinian Néstor Girolami, he’d have been hoping for a warmer welcome than a bruising pair of races offered him.
Fifth on the grid for race one, and briefly up to fourth at the start, Girolami’s luck ended there. Contact with another car dropped him down the order – selflessly ceding places to sixth-place finisher Michelisz and Mikel Azcona in the process – and he eventually finished 13th. ‘Bebu’ was only two places better off in race two following yet more contact, but that included an impressive charge back up the order from 20th following an early visit to the pits.
His attention now turns to the next round, just two weeks away at El Pinar in Uruguay. “When you have a weekend like that it is better to turn the page and reset,” said Girolami.
Azcona made up a combined nine places across the two races, a good result in the circumstances from 13th on the grid – especially while lugging the maximum 40kg compensation weight around the 4.3-km Interlagos circuit. Knocked out in the first part of qualifying by 0.018s, Azcona had his elbows out a day later as he recovered to eighth in race one and ninth in race two.
His glass was definitely half-full post-race – not just after delivering “the maximum I could achieve”, but also in looking ahead to the next round at El Pinar.
“We will be more competitive there,” insisted Azcona.
