Sebastian Steibel scores his first pole position at the Red Bull Ring

Steibel Motorsport’s Sebastian Steibel topped the times in qualifying for the third round of the TCR Germany championship at the Red Bull Ring, achieving his first pole position with his Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR.

Steibel was the driver to beat in both parts of the session, having topped the time sheets in Q1 with a best lap time of 1:37.236, ahead of Julien Apotheloz’s Cupra and Antti Buri’s Audi.

Theo Coicaud was the fastest Hyundai ahead of Bradley Burns in his Honda Civic Type R FK8, with Harald Proczyk, guest driver Gabriele Tarquini, Rene Kircher and Dominik Fugel also making it through – the latter despite having a lap time deleted for exceeding track limits.

Mitchell Cheah, Michelle Halder and Lukas Niedertscheider completed the list of drivers to make it through to Q2, with front-runners Mike Halder and Max Hesse amongst those to not make it – qualifying in 14th and 15th positions for both grids.

Steibel stayed ahead of Apotheloz in Q2 with a best lap time of 1:37.137, to take his first pole position of the year, with Proczyk in third, 0.185 seconds off the pace.

Cheah enjoyed a solid session to finish fourth ahead of Tarquini, with Coicaud, Buri and Dominik Fugel rounding out the top eight.

Michelle Halder and Rene Kircher completed the top ten, with Kircher scoring the reversed pole position for the second race.

Niedertscheider and Burns qualified eleventh and twelfth for both races.

The start of Race 1 is scheduled for 17:15 CEST this afternoon