Photo: WTCR Media

Aurélien Comte secures Peugeot’s first pole in Japan

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Aurélien Comte has taken pole position for Race 1 at Suzuka, scoring the first pole for a Peugeot Sport-built car in the World Touring Car Cup, with the ballast-free 308TCR driver set to start Race 1 alongside the Team Mulsanne Alfa Romeo of Kevin Ceccon, who also scored his career-best qualifying result.

The session was red-flagged before anyone had set a time after five minutes when Comte’s DG Sport Competition team-mate Mat’o Homola dislodged a tyre stack a Turn 4.

When the session resumed, Esteban Guerrieri set the first target time in his Münnich Motorsport Honda Civic of 2:11.882.

Kevin Ceccon then rocketed to the front in the Team Mulsanne Alfa Romeo Giulietta TCR before ten minutes were up, but it was Aurélien Comte who had more to come, taking over at the top in his Peugeot by a little over a tenth of a second.

There was some tomfoolery late in the session, which brought back shades of the infamous Salzburgring 2013 qualifying slipstreaming incident, when Thed Björk backed off to allow one of the chasing BRC Hyundais through in order not to hand them a tow, which in turn saw the three Münnich Hondas behind all back off, all refusing to break order until the Boutsen Ginion Hondas of Tiago Monteiro and Tom Coronel blasted through.

Ehrlacher was the only front-runner to improve on his final lap, moving up to fourth behind team-mate Guerrieri.

Points leader Gabriele Tarquini qualified his BRC Racing Team Hyundai fifth ahead of title rival Yvan Muller’s YMR-run entry.

Mehdi Bennani qualified his Sébastien Loeb Racing Volkswagen seventh, with Norbert Michelisz’s BRC Hyundai eighth, with Team WRT Audi driver Jean-Karl Vernay and the second DG Sport Peugeot of Mat’o Homola completing the top ten.

Thed Björk was the Hyundai driver who comparatively struggled, qualifying in 17th, 1.2 seconds from Comte’s time.

Tiago Monteiro qualified a competitive 20th on his racing return, 1.5 seconds off the pace.

In a twist of format for this weekend, qualifying for Races 2 and 3 takes place at 15:30 JST (08:30 CEST), completing the day’s activity.