Gilles Magnus: Zolder season-opener move “amazing”

Belgian home favourite and practice pace-setter Gilles Magnus has labelled the late move of the World Touring Car Cup’s season-opener to Zolder, his local track, as “amazing”.

WTCR organisers were forced to react quickly when an original deal to start the season at Salzburgring fell through, leading to series promoter Eurosport Events taking legal action against the Austrian track.

Zolder was drafted in as the short-notice replacement, allowing Magnus – the only Belgian on the grid – to make his WTCR debut on home soil.

The fact he is racing for a Belgian team, Comtoyou Racing, has only served to add to Magnus’ excitement this weekend, and the 21-year-old has grabbed the opportunity with both hands after setting the outright pace in final practice on Saturday morning.

“It’s amazing they moved this race to Zolder,” said Magnus. “It’s a nice track with places to overtake, a real old-school track with not so much space to make mistakes and I like these kinds of track.

“Zolder is the track where I have done the most laps in my life, there is no other track [like it]. The first time I drove there was in 2017 for the 24 Hours of Zolder, the biggest race at the track in terms of the number of spectators. We won it and I have the record for being the youngest winner of this race at 17 years old. I have some nice memories of this track and I also do the Belcar Endurance Championship with the Norma prototype. So, yearly I do five race weekends on this track and I do quite a lot of laps because the races are two hours long.”

Zolder was resurfaced earlier this year, making the track quicker, and Magnus – who lives some 70 km away – said that partly eradicated some of his advantage of racing at home.

“The track has become two or three seconds quicker first of all,” said the WTCR rookie. “All the little bumps have been taken out and it’s really a flat surface. It’s kind of a new track. Even if the corners are going in the same direction, all the bumps and all the small details have changed. The timing is not good for me because some of my knowledge, some of my advantage has gone but that’s how it is. But we did a Belcar Endurance Championship race there so I have driven the new asphalt and it’s obviously much better and quicker.”

Magnus’ pace-setting performance in WTCR practice has raised paddock speculation of a potential qualifying shock, especially with all three Comtoyou Racing cars appearing strong.

While most had tipped Honda, Hyundai or Lynk & Co to lead the way, so far the Audis have been most prevalent at the top of the board. That pace seemed to be further validated when Nicolas Baert took a career-first TCR Europe pole aboard a Comtoyou-run Audi in qualifying for that championship on Saturday morning.

WTCR qualifying takes place at 14.00 CEST. In a change to the sporting regulations for this year, there are points up for grabs in both Q1 and Q3 according to a 5-4-3-2-1 scale.