Photo: Audi

Tomas Kostka leads Audi 1-2 in Vallelunga qualifying

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Audi dominated the qualifying session at Vallelunga, Italy, by taking a 1-2. The pole sitter is Tomas Kostka, who emerged as being almost six tenths quicker than team-mate Davide Stancheris.

The session was entertainingly close, with Max Mugelli’s BMW M3 only one hundredth of a second behind the Audi and Francesco Sini’s Chevrolet Camaro just a little further back in fourth.

Nicola Baldan was closer to the top in qualifying after struggling for most of the Free Practice sessions. The Italian put his Mercedes C63 AMG Coupè in fifth ahead of Maurizio Copetti’s BMW M3 E92.

Behind them the CAAL Racing’s Diego Romanini will line up in his Mercedes, just ahead of Niccolò Mercatali and his BMW.

Ermanno Dionisio was able to take his Audi RS 5 to the track just in the dying moments of the session, bringing it to ninth and ahead of Leonardo Baccarelli’s Mercedes C63 AMG. Dionisio had suffered from electrical problems, which meant the Audi Sport Italia team had to change most of the wiring on the car.

Due to Kostka’s impressive pace in qualifying and the amount of laps he posted which would have been good enough for pole position, the Audi RS 5 is expected to be very quick during the race as well, despite the hard measures adopted due to the Balance of Performance system.

Race 1 is scheduled for 9.55 CET tomorrow.