Photo: TCR Media

Stefano Comini leads Comtoyou Audi 1-2 in Spa qualifying

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Stefano Comini has claimed his first pole position of the 2017 TCR International Series season at Spa-Francorchamps, leading new team-mate Frédéric Vervisch by just under a tenth of a second, while newcomer Benjamin Lessennes qualified third for the Boutsen Ginion Honda team.

In the 20-minute first segment of qualifying, there was an incident early on for Delahaye Racing’s Guillaume Mondron, who crashed out just after Les Combes shortly after setting the best lap time.

As the cars continued to heat-cycle their tyres, the times quickly fell, but there were some big name casualties who failed to make it into the second part of qualifying, including two of the Craft-Bamboo SEATs, with James Nash 16th and Hugo Valente 23rd.

Pepe Oriola just managed to escape dropping out on Q1, setting a late improvement to go 11th, which meant Gianni Morbidelli failed to make the second part of qualifying in his WestCoast Volkswagen, dropped to 13th and outside of the cut.

In Q2, Rob Huff set the first marker of 2:32.259 in his Team WRT Volkswagen, but it was everyone’s second flying time that saw the most significant improvement, with Comini jumping to the top of the time sheets ahead of team-mate Vervisch in the Audi RS 3 LMS.

Benjamin Lessennes went third fastest, while team-mate Tom Coronel had his lap time deleted due to track limits, as did GE-Force Alfa driver Davit Kajaia.

There was no opportunity to improve on the final lap after Maxime Potty crashed out at Eau Rouge, damaging the front-left of his Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR, but his time was good enough for tenth despite being ten seconds off which gave the young Belgian provisional pole for tomorrow’s Race 2, as both Kajaia and Zengo’s Ferenc Ficza’s times were all disallowed.

Jean-Karl Vernay led new team-mate Rob Huff in fourth, with Attila Tassi sixth in the M1RA Honda. Tom Coronel set a steady time at the end despite yellow flags out at Eau Rouge to go seventh, with Delahaye’s Edouard Mondron and Craft-Bamboo’s Pepe Oriola behind him.

The first race is scheduled for 17:20 CET today.