Petr Fulín celebrates Alfa’s best qualifying result in Russia

Petr Fulín took the best qualifying result for the Alfa Romeo Giulietta TCR at the Sochi Autodrom, as the Czech driver put the Mulsanne entry fifth on the grid for Race 1, behind the WestCoast Racing Honda of Gianni Morbidelli and ahead of the B3 Racing SEAT of Dusan Borkovic.

“I feel as happy as if I would have done the pole,” said Fulín. “It’s really a good result for us and for the entire team, which has worked very well, especially today when they could solve the turbo problem occurred in Free Practice 1 and give me a car capable of taking P5 in Q2.

“Considering that there was no time to work on evolving the car between Oschersleben and here, it means that we are becoming more and more competitive. This afternoon, the car was much better than this morning and I could perform three laps at the same pace. I used a bit Morbidelli’s slipstream and that probably represented a gain of around four-tenths.”

Fulín’s team-mate Michela Cerruti on the other hand had a troubled session, struggling for pace in her Alfa Romeo and qualified 15th, behind the two wild card Russian entries this weekend of Ildar Rakhmatullin and Vladimir Sheshenin, and will be forced to start 15th for both races.