Photo: Tamara Aller

Yann Ehrlacher claims pole position in Valencia

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Geely Cyan Racing’s Yann Ehrlacher scored pole position for the second round of the 2026 TCR World Tour in Valencia after a close fight with his team-mates and the Hyundais in the qualifying session.

The took to the track with the expectation of a high temperature increase during the session.

Cupra’s Aurélien Comte took an early lead of the Q1. The second run was specially productive for the World Tour drivers, with Geely’s Thed Björk stealing the top spot and the Hyundais of Mikel Azcona and Norbert Michelisz third and fourth.

Ehrlacher then rose to the top, with team-mate Santiago Urrutia right behind. The Frenchman also had a lap time deleted due to a track limits infringement.

Ehrlacher, Urrutia, Björk and Comte led the session. Also through into Q2 went Azcona, Michelisz, Jenson Brickley, Sten-Dorian Piirimägi, Julien Briché, Viktor Andersson, Ma Qing Hua and Jimmy Clairet.

Hyundai’s Gabriele Covini suffered yet another technical issue in his Elantra N TCR, having suffered problems throughout the weekend.

The field was promptly out on the track for the ten-minute Q2 session, with Azcona the first to establish a reference lap time, with Ehrlacher just six-hundredths behind. Björk settled in third, only one thousandth behind his team-mate.

The Geely pair improved with less than a minute to go to take the first two positions of the grid, with Urrutia also climbing to third.

Ehrlacher scored the pole position with a lap time of 1:17.717, with Björk just 0.153 seconds behind. Urrutia was third.

The Hyundais of Azcona and Michelisz came next, two and three-tenths behind, with both unable to improve their lap-times in their last attempts.

Comte qualified in sixth position, six-tenths off the pace, followed by Brickley, who had two laps deleted due to track limits infringements.

Ma Qing Hua qualified in eighth position, eight-tenths behind Ehrlacher, with Piirimägi and Briché completing the top ten.

After the qualifying session at Valencia, Azcona leads the stadings with 71 points, eight ahead of Ehrlacher and 17 over Björk.

The start of Race 1 is scheduled for 17:10 CEST.