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TCR 2016
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Results
Estoril, Round 13, Sunday 27
November
1. Francisco Mora (SEAT León); 2.
Rafael Lobato (SEAT León); 3. Jürgen
Schmarl (Honda Civic)
Estoril, Round 14, Sunday 27
November
1. Gustavo Moura (Honda Civic); 2.
Francisco Mora (SEAT León); 3. Gosia
Rdest (Honda Civic)
Estoril, Round 15, Sunday 27
November
1. Francisco Mora (SEAT León); 2.
Manuel Gião (Volkswagen Golf); 3.
José Rodrigues (Honda Civic)
Estoril, Round 16, Sunday 27
November
1. Francisco Mora (SEAT León); 2.
Francisco Abreu (Volkswagen Golf); 3.
Rafael Lobato (SEAT León)
Francisco Mora became the first
champion of TCR Portugal at the end of
a final race meeting full of drama that
took place at Estoril.
The Veloso Motorsport driver and his
SEAT León claimed three victories from
the weekend’s four races, but he was
able to take full advantage of the
incident that eliminated his teammate
Francisco Carvalho at the start of the
first race; the SEAT Carvalho was
sharing with Nuno Batista suffered
from extensive damage and could not
be repaired to take part in the
following races.
Before the event, the pairing of
Carvalho-Batista was trailing Mora in
the standings by only two points; the
incident that left them scoreless at
Estoril also meant that they slipped to
fourth place in the final classification
(225 points).
Mora topped the standings with 303
points, Abreu-Gião (252) beat Lobato-
Machado (244) in the fight for the
second position, while Rodrigues was
classified fifth (220).
In the first race on a wet track, Mora
overtook the early leader Rafael Lobato
(Speedy Motorsport SEAT León) on lap
2, and then increased the gap on his
way to a dominant victory. Lobato
maintained his second position after a
close fight with Jürgen Schmarl (Target
Competition Honda Civic) and Gustavo
Moura (Speedy Motorsport Honda
Civic).
Francisco Abreu (Team Novadriver
Volkswagen Golf) recovered to fifth
after being involved in the incident
with Carvalho.
Mora took a poor start in the second
race and dropped to third behind Moura
and César Machado (Lobato’s co-driver).
As Mora and Machado fought over
second place, Moura pulled away and
claimed his first victory of the season.
Eventually Mora overtook Machado and
the latter lost third position to Gosia
Rdest who had replaced Schmarl in the
Target Competition Honda. The Polish
lady was impressive on her first
appearance in the Civic TCR, recovering
from sixth to third.
The last two races saw Mora taking
lights-to-flag victories. In Race 3 he
resisted the pressure from Manuel Gião
(Team Novadriver Volkswagen Golf),
José Rodrigues (Gen Motorsport Honda
Civic) and Machado who finished in the
order immediately behind the winner.
In Race 4 Rodrigues was following Mora
at striking distance for most of the
race, but eventually was forced to pit
by a puncture which promoted Abreu
to second, while Lobato beat Moura and
Schmarl in the battle for the last
podium position.
Mora grabs the title in style