Photo: Jacques Letihon Photographe

Maxime Potty and Mathieu Detry fastest in qualifying at Zandvoort

Team WRT Volkswagen pair Maxime Potty and Mathieu Detry were fastest in the 20-minute qualifying for the latest round of the TCR Benelux series at Zandvoort, just three-thousandths of a second faster than Jaap van Lagen and Simon Reicher’s Certainty Racing Audi RS 3 LMS.

The Volkswagen Golf’s best lap of 1:45.863 was just 0.003 seconds faster in a close qualifying session, with Potty’s time demoting van Lagen with just under five minutes to go.

The grid for the qualifying long race is yet to be confirmed, with the aggregate lap times of each car’s pair of drivers used to determine the starting order.

Delahaye Racing, running their Volkswagen Golf this weekend for Guillaume Mondron and new co-driver Giacomo Altoe, was third fastest, just over two-tenths off the pace.

Kevin Abbring and Aurélien Comte wrestled DG Sport Compétition’s Peugeot 308 Racing Cup to fourth, ahead of the Boutsen Ginion Honda Civic of Tom Coronel and Ben Lessennes in fifth.

Sixth fastest was the Team WRT SEAT of Denis Dupont and Sam Dejonghe, with Danny Kroes and Pepe Oriola the last pair within a second of Potty’s time in seventh in the Ferry Monster Autosport SEAT León TCR.

Mika Morien and Stan van Oord were eighth fastest in the Bas Koeten Audi RS 3, with team-mate Willem Meijer and Paul Sieljes one spot behind, with the other Certainity Audi of Dillon Koster and Bernhard van Oranje completing the top ten.

Reigning champion Stéphane Lémeret and new co-driver Aurélien Panis struggled for pace, qualifying as the slowest of the TCR-spec cars in 12th, a worrying 4.8 seconds off the best time.

The one-hour qualifying long race starts at 11:00 CET on Saturday.