AC Motorsport tops TCR class in 24H Dubai Qualifying

Qualifying action for the 24H Dubai got underway with a 45-minute session for the TCE division with TCR, A3, SP3 and CUP1 touring cars on Thursday afternoon. In the usual tight battle for the outright fastest times between the SP3 and TCR cars, it was an SP3 entry that came out on top as Steven Wells put the CWS Engineering Ginetta G55 on pole position with a time of 2:09.035.
Ten of the 12 TCR entries filled the spots from second to eleventh in the most fascinating battle in TCE qualifying. Driving the AC Motorsport Audi RS 3 LMS, Vincent Radermecker was the early pace-setter and topped the class time sheets for quite a while, but a spirited charge by Yannick Mettler put the Autorama Volkswagen Golf GTI by Wolf-Power Racing briefly on top. However, it didn’t take long for Radermecker to respond. With his time of 2:09.571, the Belgian was the only TCR driver to break the 2:10 wall and secured pole position in class as a result, repeating his class pole from last year. He will be lining up on the front row of the TCE grid that will start ten seconds after the GT cars.
The Swiss-entered Volkswagen ended up second in class from the LMS Racing by Bas Koeten Racing Audi RS 3 LMS of Antti Buri.
The 24-hour race, opening round of the 2019 24H TCE Series, will start at 15:00 local time on Friday.

24H Dubai – Qualifying results TCR class
1^st – 2:09.571, AC Motorsport Audi RS 3 LMS (Perrin/Radermecker/Boonen/Magnus)
2^nd – 2:10.290, Autorama Motorsport VW Golf GTI (Menden/Danz/Mettler/Tanner/Ogay)
3^rd – 2:10.719, LMS Racing Audi RS 3 LMS (Buri/Kangas/Laaksonen)
4^th – 2:11.102, Team Dynamics Audi RS 3 LMS (Kaye/H. Neal/W. Neal/Cameron/Giddings)
5^th – 2:12.132, KCMG Honda Civic Type R (Ip/Ma/Lee/Yan/Jim)
6^th – 2:12.313, TeamWork Motorsport Audi RS 3 LMS (Wong/Hui/Poon/Fung)