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Honda wild card Néstor Girolami takes pole at Sandown

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Néstor Girolami has continued a stellar debut in Australian racing after taking pole position for this afternoon’s first TCR Australia series race at Sandown Raceway, showing his TCR experience in a field of full-time drivers.

The Wall Racing ring-in was able to carry across form from Friday’s two practice sessions where he put his Honda Civic Type R TCR to the top of the timesheets, going one step closer to a win by putting himself in the best position possible to fight for victory this afternoon.

A star in the World Touring Car Cup, Girolami’s wealth of experience in the Honda TCR machine made up for his lack of running in Australia, only having one hiccup through the session after going off at Dandenong Road.

While Girolami’s team-mate John Martin was able to get within one-hundredth of a second, the Argentinian further lowered the bar by posting the first sub-1:14 lap time for the TCR field at Sandown, a 1:13.9637 being good enough for provisional pole.

Kelly Racing’s Andre Heimgartner put his Holden Astra TCR into second between the two Hondas after a brief spin at Turn 4 early in the session, just over three-tenths of a second down on the polesitter’s time.

Championship leader Will Brown managed to qualify fourth on the grid in his HMO Customer Racing prepared Hyundai i30 N TCR, edging out experienced former Supercars driver Jason Bright’s Alliance Autosport Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR to the second row of the grid.

Jordan Cox qualified the Garry Rogers Motorsport Alfa Romeo Giulietta TCR in sixth, faster than Tony D’Alberto’s Civic Type R TCR and the Kelly Racing Holden Astra of Bryce Fullwood, posting a career best qualifying result in TCR Australia.

Championship contender Dylan O’Keeffe managed to squeeze into ninth place, five spots down on his rival in Will Brown, while the top ten was rounded out by the GRM prepared Renault Megane RS TCR of James Moffat.

Race one begins at 13:10 local time, the first of the three 30 minute sprint races this weekend. Tomorrow’s race two and three kick-off at 12:15 and 13:10 respectively.