Gilles Magnus takes pole position on home soil as Josh Files crashes out

Comtoyou Racing’s Gilles Magnus secured his maiden TCR Europe series pole position at Spa-Francorchamps, while points leader Josh Files missed out on Q2 after crashing at Raidillon.

Magnus set a best time of 2:28.885 in his Audi RS 3 LMS, to beat fellow Audi driver Santiago Urrutia by six-hundredths of a second.

Brutal Fish Racing Team’s Dan Lloyd posted the third fastest time, but is under investigation by the stewards for not being part of the 12 quickest cars in Q1 to make it into the second segment of qualifying. Lloyd’s final lap had been good enough for the top 12, but was set five seconds after the red flags were shown.

Urrutia’s WRT team-mate Maxime Potty therefore is expected to inherit the position in his Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR.

Q1 was twice red-flagged for separate incident at the exit of Raidillon, leaving Urrutia the fastest at the end of the truncated opening segment.

Teddy Clairet was the first to go off in his Team Clairet Sport Peugeot 308TCR with nine minutes of the session left to run. Once the session resumed, Files – who had his fourth fastest time deleted for a track limits violation – then crashed at the same location on his first proper flying lap.

With less than two minutes remaining on the clock, officials elected not to restart Q1, dumping Files out along with Target team-mate Andreas and Jessica Bäckman.

The Audis remained the cars to beat at the start of Q2, with Magnus’ opening gambit proving enough of a margin over Urrutia.

Behind Potty was the second Team WRT VW Golf GTI of Ash Sutton, who finished just under a second off the pace of Magnus and five-hundredths adrift of his team-mate Potty.

Aurélien Comte will start sixth on the grid in his DG Sport Compétition Peugeot 308TCR, ahead of Julien Briché – who had his own high-speed crash at Raidillon during Friday’s second practice session.

Target Competition’s Mat’o Homola finished eighth quickest, ahead of Jimmy Clairet and Davit Kajaia who provisionally sits on Race 2 pole position.

Dusan Borkovic was the only other Target Competition Hyundai i30 N TCR to make it into Q2, and could be promoted to pole for Race 2 following the investigation into Lloyd.

The first race is schedule to take place at 13:50 CEST, with Race 2 at 12:00 CEST tomorrow.