HOR - TTM 2026 - R1: Horsma Raceway

A lead never surrendered

The first points race of the new Championship produced an unusually exacting victory at Horsma Raceway. Ayrton Titos converted pole position into the win, leading at each recorded passage of the 29 laps, but the bare fact of command did not make his afternoon a comfortable one. Marc Orós was never allowed far from the Spaniard's Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.5-16 Evolution II, and at the chequered flag the two were separated by only 0.623 seconds.

Titos had the advantage from the outset, but the race soon acquired the shape of a three-car affair. Kasperi Sirén joined Titos and Orós in a leading group which had settled into place by the seventh lap and remained contained within five seconds for the rest of the race. There was no room for a lapse among the leading Mercedes drivers: the Finn's presence made the matter more than a private duel, while Orós remained the immediate threat to the leader.

Thus Titos had to defend a lead which, though uninterrupted, was under constant examination. He reached the flag first after 29 laps, Orós second, and Sirén third. Sirén also set the fastest lap, a 2:05.145, to underline the pace of the leading trio.

The pressure of the closing laps

The closing phase belonged to Titos and Orós. The latter remained within two seconds of the leader across the final portion of the race, preserving the contest when a lesser pursuit might have accepted second place. The final margin was scarcely more than half a second, and gave the opening round a finish of rare closeness.

For Titos, the significance lay in the combination of authority and restraint. He had led throughout, but the reward for maintaining that position against Orós's persistent challenge was not merely the first trophy of the campaign. The victory gives him 40 points and the early Championship lead, three clear of Orós on 37. Sirén's third place brings him 34 points, leaving the opening table as close as the race itself had suggested.

There are five races still to come, and a first round can establish little beyond an order of strength on one day. Yet the Horsma Raceway result has placed the three Mercedes men at the centre of the early argument, with Titos having made the first and most valuable statement.

The Nissan contest behind

Behind the podium, Kuba Palubicki and Jacopo Hrynecko conducted a sustained Nissan Skyline R32 GT-R contest for fourth. They were close from the seventh lap to the twentieth, and exchanged the advantage twice in the course of their struggle. Hrynecko moved ahead before half-distance, only for Palubicki to reclaim the position on lap 18.

That proved the decisive alteration. Palubicki finished fourth and Hrynecko fifth, both completing the full distance, while Attila Diner's Audi V8 quattro Evo followed them home in sixth. The Nissan pair could not intrude upon the leading Mercedes group, but their contest ensured that the race retained a second point of tension once the order at the front had begun to settle.

Masse rises from the back

Florian Masse supplied the notable recovery of the afternoon. Starting 30th in the Ford Sierra RS500 Cosworth, he had risen to 20th by the end of the first lap and continued to work forward through the field. His eventual 16th place represented a gain of 14 positions, an emphatic result in a large 39-car opening field.

It was a drive of a different character from the leading battle, concerned less with a single opponent than with finding space and preserving momentum amid the traffic. Masse completed all 29 laps, and his progress offered a useful counterpoint to the measured contest at the head of the order.