TCR / 28 October 2024

Motorsport Games success and double Italian crown for Civic Type R TCR

The Honda Civic Type R clinched its 15th major title of 2024 as JAS Motorsport Development Driver Ignacio Montenegro won the FIA Motorsport Games Touring Car contest and ALM Motorsport claimed a hat-trick of successes.

 

FIA Motorsport Games

Ignacio Montenegro triumphed as Hondas dominated at Valencia. The Argentinian topped opening practice, qualified on pole position and won the qualifying race in his Team Argentina Civic, which was run jointly by ALM Motorsport and RC2 Racing Team.

He then finished second on the road to fellow JAS Development Driver Marco Butti, of Team Italy, after a superb late-race battle, but was promoted to victory post-race.

Butti had driven superbly on Sunday from ninth on the grid. He was fifth by the end of Lap One, passed two cars on Lap Five to claim second and then caught Montenegro on the damp track surface, only to see his efforts unrewarded.

Denmark's Rene Povlsen (TPR Motorsport) was fifth with Indonesia's Umar Abdullah (ALM) ninth and Bangladesh's Anwar Avik (GOAT) 10th. Germany's Rene Kircher (Mertel Motorsport) qualified fifth but did not start the final after a technical issue on Saturday.

 

TCR Italy

ALM's other two crowns came at Monza as the Estonian team clinched the Teams' Championship and saw their home-grown talent Ruben Volt win the Under-25s title for a second time.

Volt came into the weekend 10 points from the overall series lead and halved the gap with fourth spot in a wet opening race. Making it upto fifth at the Race Two start, he was hit at the first corner and suffered suspension damage.

That led to a gradual fall to ninth, meaning he finished level on points with the overall champion, but missed out on the crown on countback. He did, however, take the Under-25s title to add to his 2022 success.

Team-mate Paolo Rocca won the Under-25s class in Race Two while Levente Losonczy - also a JAS Development Driver - was third in the category in Race One.

MM Motorsport's Giacomo Ghermandi drove superbly to fourth in Race Two while his team-mate Marco Pellegrini was second in the Masters' class on Sunday and Jacopo Cimenes and Luciano Martinez each scored a third-place result in the Rookie category.

 

Super Taikyu

M&K Racing dominated proceedings at Okayama as part of the biggest ST-TCR field of the season as the team scored a one-two finish.

From pole position Shinji Nakano, Mitsuhiro Endo and Shion Tsujimoto were rarely challenged and came home just 15s ahead of the sister car of Lee Jeong Woo, Sena Yamamoto and 'Kizuna'. The latter trio hold a slim points lead with one race to go.

 

Italian GT Endurance

The season finale produced a deserved Am-class podium finish for the Nova Race NSX GT3 Evo 22 of Luca Magnoni, Rodolfo Massaro and Massimo Ciglia, who coped well with changing grip levels in the three-hour race at Monza.

The sister car of Imola winners Felice Jelmini and Alex Frassineti had a new face in Kikko Galbiati as the NSX moved into the Pro category. They qualified eighth and finished seventh overall.