BMW driver Julián Santero secured a major victory in the final held in Viedma, Río Negro, at the Autódromo Ciudad de Viedma, for the second round of the Turismo Carretera. According to the Argentine News Agency, behind the 32-year-old driver, the podium was completed by Ford Mustang drivers Mauricio Lambiris and Elio Craparo, who finished nine-tenths of a second and 3.753 seconds behind the leader, respectively. With the win, after being excluded from the previous race, Santero moved up to tenth place in the championship with 47 points, while the leader is Jonatan Castellano in his Dodge Challenger with 70 units, followed by the aforementioned Lambiris, 5.5 points behind. The 2024 champion, Julián Santero, had a great race in Viedma and managed to secure his first valid win of the year, having won the previous edition in El Calafate but was disqualified from it for failing the technical inspection with non-compressive values in his Ford engine. The Mendoza native had a perfect weekend: he secured pole position, won his qualifying series, and won the final without leaving any doubt, also taking the fastest lap. His victory was also historic, as it was the first in BMW's history in the category, having been incorporated as the seventh brand from the past date, with the M4 being the model used by the Argentine. With the championship in mind, the best move of the afternoon was executed by Lambiris, who was running third behind Craparo and fully utilized the slipstream to then attempt an outside pass in turn 10, with an effective move that allowed him to reach second place on the eighteenth lap. With a better performance than in El Calafate, where he finished P14, the Uruguayan Lambiris is now second in the 2026 TC championship and continues to seek his first title in the category, having been runner-up in 2021 and 2024 and third in last year's championship. Additionally, Craparo secured his first podium of the season, having been twenty-fourth in the first round, and the one who couldn't shine was the winner of the previous race, Jonatan Castellano, who finished eighth in this edition but still maintains the first position in the category. The most notable situation of the final was the large number of cars competing, 58, which was a record for the last 15 years. Naturally, this generated a higher number of crashes than usual, with one of the affected parties being the current champion Agustín Canapino, who drives the Chevrolet Camaro and had to retire in the first two races of the year, complicating his title defense. The third round will arrive at the end of March, on the weekend of Sunday the 29th, when the TC will race at the Autódromo Parque Provincia de Neuquén, in the city of Centenario of the aforementioned province.
