Kevin Gleason content with race two pole despite balance issues

American driver Kevin Gleason qualified in tenth place for the first race tomorrow at Portimao in the WestCoast Racing Honda Civic TCR, which with the flipped reversed grid becomes pole position for race two, and says he’s happy with the improvements that the team were able to make before qualifying.

Gleason was seventh in the first practice session, but had slipped to 11th in the second session, but bounced back in qualifying to set the tenth fastest time in Q1, which allowed him to take part in Q2 where he was tenth fastest again.

“We were struggling a lot with the balance of my car, and we make some changes before qualifying and with the new tyres I was able to go the quickest I’ve been all weekend,” said Gleason to TouringCarTimes “Of course, I always want to qualify as well as I can, certainly not in tenth position, but it’s certainly a benefit to have race two pole position.”

Looking ahead to tomorrow’s races, where in race two he will start just ahead of Michel Nykjaer’s Target Competition SEAT and Sergey Afanasyev in the Craft-Bamboo Lukoil SEAT, Gleason’s hopeful of turning the best possible grid position into a strong result on race day.

“I think we can work on the balance of my car a little bit, so hopefully I can dig a few more tenths out of myself and the car and have a good race pace,” he added.

As with all the European rounds, this is Gleason’s first visit to the Autódromo Internacional do Algarve, and says it’s a more fun track than Valencia last weekend.

“I definitely really like this track,” he said. “It’s more of an old school circuit, it’s got some big hills, fast turns and some quite technical sections, so I do really enjoy driving here.”