The Lynk & Co 03 TCR has made its maiden Australian track appearance at Phillip Island with British driver Tom Oliphant at the wheel.

The Ashley Seward Motorsport Lynk & Co was built by Cyan Racing in Sweden on behalf of the Chinese manufacturer. It will be shown off in its full livery prior to the second round of the Supercheap Auto TCR Australia Series at Phillip Island on May 12-14.

Oliphant completed an initial run and was suitably with the potential of his new weapon.

“It feels awesome,” he said. “The differences between this compared to the Alfa Romeo are night and day. It is a proper race car, they’ve clearly spent a lot of time and money developing it. It is really responsive, and you can feel everything the car is going to do.

“The way I’m describing it to the engineers is instead of reacting to what’s going on like in the Alfa. I’m more predicting what’s going to happen driving the Lynk & Co. It’s all really positive at the moment, we haven’t really changed anything with the car, we’re just trying to get used to it.”

Oliphant is placed fifth after the opening round at Symmons Plains, which he competed in with ASM’s Alfa. He believes the new car will give him a strong chance of maintaining, or even advancing his way through the Supercheap Auto TCR Australia Series standings.

“The Audis will be quick again at Phillip Island with its long, sweeping corners, which I imagine will favour a long wheelbase car.

“I’ve got a piece of machinery underneath me now that I can really compete with. I’ve got a car now that I can use every tool at its disposal and I feel really, really confident I can race with the frontrunners,” Oliphant concluded.

Other TCR entries testing at the island circuit included the Valvoline Team GRM Peugeot 308 TCR with Aaron Cameron while Zac Soutar did laps in the latest generation Tufflift Racing Audi RS3 TCR.

This weekend, Ben Bargwanna will race in the first round of the 2023 TCM World Tour, which takes place in Portugal.

The World Tour will incorporate TCR Australia for two rounds in November, at Sydney Motorsport Park and Mount Panorama, Bathurst, respectively.