Double victory for Parente in TCR Portugal’s final event

Armando Parente, driving a Team Novadriver Volkswagen Golf GTI, won both TCR Portugal’s final races at Portimão’s Autódromo Algarve. This helped him to finish the season as runner up in the championship behind Speedy Motorsport’s Pedro Salvador.
Salvador had arrived to the closing event with a 49-point margin ahead of the Sports & You pair of Francisco Abreu and Rafael Lobato; despite his Cupra did not finish any of today’s races, Salvador clinched the TCR Portugal title.
At the start of the first race Abreu’s Peugeot 308 took the lead ahead of pole sitter Parente; Francisco Carvalho stalled the engine of his Audi RS3 LMS and dropped at the back of the field. Salvador retired in lap 4 with a broken suspension, while Carvalho recovered to third.
For most of the race the positions remained frozen, with Manuel Gião’s Kia cee'd and Gustavo Moura’s Audi fighting for the fourth position. On lap 10, Parente overtook Abreu for the lead and the latter lost second place to Carvalho during the final lap.
Parente encored with a lights-to-flag victory in Race 2. Behind him Lobato and Carvalho were fighting for the second position until the latter’s Audi retired with a gearbox problem on lap 7. With three laps to go Lobato made a mistake and went off into the gravel; this handed the second place to Gião who took the first podium ever for the SARD-built Kia cee'd TCR. Telmo Gomes completed the podium in the Speedy Motorsport Audi he shared with Moura.
As for the new champion Salvador, he retired in the early stages.