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5
STANDINGS
BAHRAIN
2016 started with six car brands
represented. While the SEAT León,
Honda Civic and Volkswagen Golf, the
race winners of 2015, confirmed in
Bahrain their excellent form, the
models introduced later or debuting
now, such as the Opel Astra, the
Subaru Sti and the Alfa Romeo
Giulietta, showed increasing
competitiveness, the first two even
making it to points finishes from
scratch. More new entries are expected
in the forthcoming months, adding
further variety to the field.
Bahrain offered plenty of duels and
overtaking manoeuvres, with door-to-
door and wheel-to-wheel fighting.
Those factors, on top of close, levelled
competition, are the essence of
Touring Car racing. It was certainly
refreshing to see drivers belonging to
the same team, such as Pepe Oriola,
James Nash and Sergey Afanasyev from
Craft-Bamboo Team Lukoil, fighting
without any orders from their pits, or
the three stars of WestCoast Racing,
Gianni Morbidelli, Kevin Gleason and
Aku Pellinen doing exactly the same.
Equally surprising was to see the
reigning Champion Stefano Comini
challenged by new stars coming from
other touring car series, such as Dušan
Borkovi
ć
or Mat’o Homola, and no less
encouraging was to see new faces, like
Davit Kajaia, who comes from a
country rarely mentioned in
motorsports chronicles, Georgia,
impressing everybody. Just like
Michela Cerruti, a lady driver able to
play on an equal footing with many of
her male colleagues.
In short, quality, diversity and
excitement are already there, just as
TCR is due to continue expanding in
Asia, China, Thailand and Russia and
about to be launched in other key
markets such as Germany, the Benelux,
Italy, Spain or Portugal.
The advice, then, is to stay tuned to
what happens in the TCR world. Enjoy
the show!
Team mates James Nash and Pepe Oriola fight for victory in Race 2