- Quique Bordas has a pole, a victory and a third place to reinforce his leadership of the TCR Spain with just one round left.
- Double plus pole for Érik Zabala to extend his lead in the TCR Cup.
- Jurgen Smet returns to competition after a long break in the GT-CER and adds a victory sharing the Renault RS01 with Iván Parera.
- “ We finish Jerez with our most leading CUPRAs, and full of motivation to work towards the last event of the year, which will also be held at home, and fight to achieve both titles in the TCR Spain,” comments Jaime Serrano , CEO of the team.
Monlau Motul closes its visit to the Ángel Nieto de Jerez circuit, the penultimate round of the TCR Spain and the GT-CER, with an extraordinary haul of results: three victories, two pole positions and a firm lead in the two categories of the Spanish TCR Championship with Quique Bordas and Érik Zabala as protagonists, and a victory in the GT-CER for Jurgen Smet and Iván Parera.
The challenge of Monlau Motul Technical School before the Jerez event of the TCR Spain was joined by the work of review and prior tuning of the team’s Renault RS01, which returned to activity in the GT-CER double race on the Andalusian track with Jurgen Smet at the wheel, after a long competitive break.
Quique Bordas and Érik Zabala arrived in Jerez defending the leadership in their respective categories. In the main one, the TCR Spain, the Catalan confirmed his good harmony at the wheel of the CUPRA León Competition from the same qualifying session, dominating its two segments and taking pole position and the 10 points associated with a time of 1 : 52,085. Zabala, for his part, also dominated the round among the TCR Cup participants, rising to pole position and pocketing the 10 points associated with it.
In the first race, Bordas controlled the peloton at all times, winning with a 5.5 second advantage, while in the TCR Cup, Zabala did the same and, like his teammate in the main category, added the fastest lap of the race.
In the second race, with the grid reversed in the top 10, Bordas was forced to come back. From the tenth starting position, the TCR Spain leader managed to overtake seven rivals to finish in an optimal third place. In the TCR Cup, Zabala managed to make amends for a difficult start by regaining the lead in a direct fight to score the double of the weekend.
Transferred to the provisional classification, these partial results reinforce the leadership of both in their respective categories: Quique Bordas has 227 points at the top of the TCR Spain, 50 more than Álvaro García with only one race remaining. In the TCR Cup, Érik Zabala accumulates 260 points, 31 more than Marco Aguilera.
David Simón , Team Manager of Monlau Motul, evaluated the weekend of both riders: “This weekend’s results will force us, in the case of Bordas, to face the last event with more ballast than we would like, but in exchange We have achieved a great advantage in the classification. As far as Érik is concerned, we must continue to maintain the upward and almost error-free line of this weekend on the Andalusian track.”
GT CER, victory in Jurgen Smet’s return to activity
The GT CER also generated good news for Monlau Motul Technical School. In his return to competition after a long break, Jurgen Smet had a weekend of clear progress with the help of his teammate and coach Iván Parera. It didn’t take long for both drivers to get the hang of the fast and always challenging Renault RS01, which propelled Parera to pole position in the first session and lifted Smet to fourth in the second.
In the first of the races, scheduled for 50 minutes, Smet and Pareras took an incontestable victory with more than seven seconds ahead of the best of their rivals. In the second, scheduled for the same distance, the Monlau Motul pilots were forced to battle in the peloton after giving up some time due to a contact with a rival. However, they managed to climb up to sixth place overall, first in their category.
Jaime Serrano , CEO of Monlau Motul Technical School, valued Smet’s return to competition: “ We leave Jerez with our most leading CUPRAs, and full of motivation to work towards the last event of the year, which will also be held at home, with the aim of achieving both championships. Likewise, we are especially happy to see Jurgen in action again. His challenge this weekend was not easy, neither for him nor for the team’s technicians, but they have performed in an extraordinary way. In any case, Smet’s evolution has been constant since the first training session, improving every time he went out on the track with the invaluable help of Iván, who with his work as a coach has known how to get the most out of his teammate.”
Next Saturday, December 2, the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya will host the last qualifying test of the TCR Spain and the TCR Cup, which will share the stage with the GT CER, which will schedule its traditional season finale with a two-hour race plus one turn away.
