Norbert Michelisz defeats Esteban Guerrieri in crucial qualifying battle
Norbert Michelisz scored arguably the most important pole position of his career with a crushing performance in second qualifying at the World Touring Car Cup season-finale, beating main title rival Esteban Guerrieri while Lynk & Co’s nightmare weekend continued under the Sepang floodlights.
Michelisz was on tantalising form as the grids for the final two races of the season were set this evening, sailing through Q1 and then setting a soaring pace to lead the way in Q2.
Thanks to topping the Q2 times, Michelisz gave himself the advantage of first choice for the solo Q3 runner order, opting to head out on track first among the five remaining drivers gunning for Race 3 pole.
The BRC Hyundai racer’s Q3 lap then proved out of reach for the competition, a 2:13.141 easily enough to hand the Hungarian Race 3 pole and another five points towards his title ambitions.
Guerrieri ended up second in his Münnich Motorsport Honda, albeit a full 0.784s down on Michelisz, meaning the two chief championship protagonists will share the front row of the grid in the final race of the season on Sunday night.
The outcome marks a perfect Friday for Michelisz, who had also set the pace in the first qualifying session earlier in the day and consequently will start two of the three decisive Sepang races from pole.
Ma Qing Hua will start from pole on the partially-reversed Race 2 grid thanks to going tenth fastest in Q2, sharing the front row with Guerrieri’s Honda team-mate Néstor Girolami. Guerrieri will be sixth on the Race 2 grid, with Michelisz tenth having topped the Q2 times.
Meanwhile at the other end of the spectrum, the fleet of Cyan Racing-run Lynk & Cos made the headlines for all the wrong reasons. The current teams’ championship leaders fell dramatically off the pace in Q1, failing to get any of their four cars into the top 12 and through to Q2.
Title contender Yvan Muller came close to progressing, but was ultimately knocked out as times tumbled at the end of the session. Muller wound up P13 as the best of the Lynk & Cos, while fellow championship hopeful Thed Björk suffered yet a bigger blow in 19th.
Muller is thus poised to start this weekend’s three races from 16th, 13th and 13th, with Björk all the way down in 28th, 19th and 19th.
The remaining Cyan Racing cars of Yann Ehrlacher and Andy Priaulx languished in 18th and 27th respectively.
Others to fall in Q1 included first qualifying star Aurélien Panis (Cupra), KCMG Honda’s Tiago Monteiro and all four Volkswagen drivers (Benjamin Leuchter the lead VW in 21st).
Q1 also featured a clash between Audi colleagues Frédéric Vervisch and Jean-Karl Vernay at Turn 2 – although both were able to continue – and a Full Course Yellow situation caused by Panis striking a tyre stack out of place.
With all three of the season-ending WTCR taking place on Sunday, tomorrow marks a day off for the World Touring Car Cup paddock. Race 1 is scheduled to start at 15.15 local time / 08.15 CET on Sunday.
