Jean-Karl Vernay dominates Spa-Francorchamps qualifying
Audi’s Jean-Karl Vernay has lived up to expectations, taking pole position at Spa-Francorchamps. The Frenchman was the only driver to drop below the 2:29-barrier, with second-placed Maxime Potty half a second off his pace in his Volkswagen Golf. Julien Briché was third in his Peugeot 308TCR.
The session was red-flagged when Viktor Davidovski crashed at Raidillon at the very beginning of Q1. The Macedonian’s crash was so hard it took ten minutes to repair the tyre barrier, after which there was no major drama.
Potty had led the way for most of Q1, but Vernay broke the 2:29 barrier with 5 minutes to go. Attila Tassi missed out on Q2 after having two laps disallowed due to track limits.
In Q2 Vernay did the job with just one timed lap, finishing ahead of Potty and Briché. Mikel Azcona was fourth, one second off the ultimate pace and two tenths faster than fellow Cupra driver Stian Paulsen. Despite trying to make use of his team-mates’ slipstream, Target Competition’s Dusan Borkovic went no further than sith in his Hyundai i30 N TCR, ahead of fastest Honda man Josh Files in seventh.
Stefano Comini was eighth in his new Honda Civic, just ahead of Target Competition’s Kris Richard and Reece Barr, who will be on pole position for tomorrow’s second race. Daniel Nagy and Danny Kroes were out of the top ten and will not benefit from the reversed grid. Both drivers did not complete a valid lap time, as they were disallowed due to track limits infringements.
The first race is scheduled for today at 17:20 CET.
