TCR / 27 May 2024

Baptista wins with Civic Type R TCR in Brazil

Rodrigo Baptista gave the Honda Civic Type R TCR its first TCR South America win of the year with a dominant performance at Cascavel in Brazil.

And with two further class wins from his Squadra Martino team-mate Fabio Casagrande in the Trophy division, it was another fruitful weekend for the JAS Motorsport-built touring car.

Baptista claimed his first pole position of 2024 in Saturday qualifying and, after making a strong start in the first of Sunday's two races, took an untroubled win by nearly five seconds. From 10th on Race Two's partially-reversed grid, he climbed to sixth by the flag.

While Sunday's races counted for both TCR South America and TCR Brasil points, there was also a double-header on Saturday just for cars taking part in the national series.

Among these was Baptista's, but he stalled on the line, dropping to 11th and setting the stage for a strong recovery to sixth. He was sixth in Race Two and now sits third in the points.

Team-mate Juan Manuel Casella was fourth and seventh on Saturday and fifth in both races on Sunday.

In the Trophy division, Casagrande - the class champion in 2022 and '23 - dominated the South America races on Sunday with two easy wins after putting his Civic on category pole in 10th overall.

Race Two was, in fact, a one-two result for the Martino team in the division with Enrique Maglione second to add to the fourth spot he'd achieved in Race One. Maglione was second in both Saturday races, which were not contested by Casagrande.