Sensational start for Jack Young in TCR China

Jack Young had a brilliant start to his TCR China championship season, despite retiring from the second race, the Belfast driver showed incredible pace, leading the second race, and finishing the first race in second position, leaving Shanghai fifth in the championship. Jack shocked in practice as he topped the time sheets in the first session, despite never having been to Shanghai before, or having raced on the Michelin tyres.

In qualifying, the 21-year-old put his Dongfeng Honda Racing Team-run Civic Type R TCR third on the grid, just behind last year’s championship-winning Lynk & Cos, and showed he was going to be a force to contend with this season.

In the first race on Saturday afternoon, the car ahead of him bogged down, and Jack was caught behind and dropped to fourth, but quickly recovered to third before the end of the lap, and then claimed second place at the start of lap two. An early safety car bunched the field up, and he was briefly able to battle with the race leader for a few laps before he needed to look after his tyres to protect his second place from the cars which were coming through the field. Jack crossed the line second on his debut, and switched his focus to the partially reversed grid race on Sunday.

Jack had a steady start, while from lap two he began charging up the order, picking off his rivals one-by-one as he carved his way through to take the lead at the start of lap seven. He then dropped back to second by the end of the lap behind last year’s champion, and was looking set for a safe second place finish before he ran into an issue with two laps to go and was forced to pit the car.

It was nevertheless an incredible start to the year for Jack, who will now switch from the five-year-old Civic Type R he raced this weekend to the brand-new third generation Civic Type R TCR for the next round of the championship at Zhejiang in the Hangzhou province of China on June 23rd-25th.

Jack Young said:

“It’s been an incredible start to the season for me in TCR China. When we were fastest straight away in practice even with no time to prepare, I had a really encouraging feeling. We were right on the pace in qualifying, and then we had a pair of fantastic races. I lost places at the start of Race 1 when the guy in front of me stalled, but I was able to get up to second quickly enough and then just had to manage the tyres to the finish. Race 2 was amazing. I was able to fight my way through and take the lead of the race by half distance from eighth. Ultimately I dropped back to second, but that’s where we were set to finish until we had to stop the car right at the end. It was still an amazing weekend, and we did a brilliant job with this car, which is five years old and in its last race weekend, as we’ll have the brand-new Civic for Zhejiang next month – and after the great weekend we’ve just had, I can’t wait.”