Josh Files and his Target Competition Honda Civic made very clear that they want to retain the TCR Germany title. After winning the season’s opening race at Oschersleben, Files has scored a double victory at the Red Bull Ring, already building a 55-point leading margin in the standings ahead of his closest rival Sheldon van der Linde. Kris Richard lies third a further 15 points adrift.
In Race 1, Files took his second win of the season after making a brilliant start from the fourth row of the grid. He took the lead and his Honda was then never headed, taking the win by 3.6 seconds over the SEAT León of Mike Halder, with pole-sitter Dino Calcum’s Opel Astra finishing in third place a further second adrift. Steve Kirsch was fourth, with the recovering Antti Buri fifth.
The race saw the Safety Car deployed on two occasions: once when Buri’s Audi made contact with Luca Engstler’s Volkswagen that had to be recovered from the gravel trap and again on Lap 6 when Sven Markert’s Audi hit the barriers after contact with Pascal Eberle’s SEAT.
In Race 2, after a superb start from third on the grid, Files passed the front-row Audi cars of Robin Brezina and Sandro Kaibach to lead going into the first corner of the race and the Briton never looked back. After a brief safety car interruption while the SEAT of Alex Morgan was recovered, Files managed the restart well and pulled away to build a lead of over four seconds until he took the chequered flag to record his third win of the season. Moritz Oestreich finished second to give Honda a 1-2, while the SEAT of Mike Halder took another podium position after finishing second behind in Race 1.
The Honda of Kris Richard was fourth, half a second ahead of Calcum’s Opel.
TCR Germany will return to Oschersleben on July 8 and 9, for rounds 5 and 6, where it will share the bill with the TCR International Series.
