Buri grabs pole ahead of Monteiro for TCR Germany finale
Hyundai Team Engstler driver Antti Buri has secured pole position for the 2020 TCR Germany championship season finale at Oschersleben, outqualifying Honda’s guest driver Tiago Monteiro by less than a tenth of a second, with Honda’s championship contender Dominik Fugel putting his Civic TCR third on the grid.
The only driver to miss the Q2 cut-off was the Civic FK2 of Albert Legutko, with the first session led by Fugel ahead of the two guest drivers, Luca Engstler (Hyundai), and Monteiro.
In Q2, Monteiro put down a competitive first target time of 1:31.669 on his first run, with teammate Fugel setting a time which put him second until his time was deleted due to a track limits infringement, which promoted Buri to second.
Fugel was able to go second fastest on his second attempt, splitting Monteiro and Buri, but Buri managed to find even more time in his i30 N car and went fastest of all with a time of 1:31.474, just before the session was then red-flagged due to an incident involving the Volkswagen of Džiugas Tovilavičius.
The session resumed with just over three minutes left on the clock allowing everyone one more chance to improve their times.
Monteiro and Harald Proczyk were the only front-runners to find more time, but not more positions, both staying second and fourth, which meant Buri’s time was good enough to claim the Finn his second pole of the season, his first since the season opener at Lausitzring in July. Engstler couldn’t even start in Q2 due to a broken rear suspension.
Buri also closes to seven points off Proczyk in the drivers’ standings ahead of tomorrow’s race, which takes place at 11:00 CET and will be streamed live at www.tcr-series.com.
Qualifying
1:31.474 Antti Buri (Hyundai Team Engstler, Hyundai i30 N)
1:31.561 Tiago Monteiro (Honda Team Sachsen, Honda Civic Type R FK7)
1:31.865 Dominik Fugel (Honda Team Sachsen, Honda Civic Type R FK7)
1:31.866 Harald Proczyk (HP Racing International, Hyundai i30 N)
1:32.084 Jan Seyffert (HP Racing International, Hyundai i30 N)
Championship points
1. Harald Proczyk 215 pts; 2. Antti Buri 208; 3. Dominik Fugel 198
Picture: ADAC Motorsport
