Thed Björk set pole position for Ningbo Race 1

After setting the fastest laps in both yesterday’s Free Practices, MRacing-YMR’s Thed Björk claimed pole position for the WTCR Race 1 at Ningbo International Speedpark.
It was a very close session that saw the 18 fastest drivers covered by nine hundredths of a second and was cut short by the red flag one minute before the end, when Mat’o Homola crashed his DG Sport Peugeot 308.
The Hyundai i30 N cars were on top for most of the 30-minute session, as BRC Racing’s teammates Norbert Michelisz and Gabriele Tarquini set provisional fastest laps.
The Hungarian was clocked at 1:51.784 on his first flying lap and was soon demoted by Esteban Guerrieri’s 1:51.428 in the Münnich Motorsport Honda Civic. Tarquini responded beating Guerrieri’s time by just two thousandths and then Michelisz regained the first position with a lap of 1:51.254.
The next improvement came from Frédéric Vervisch in the Comtoyou Racing Audi RS3 LMS who was timed at 1:51.081, but eventually Björk jumped on top with a lap of 1:51.028.
In the final moments, both Michelisz (1:51.157) and Tarquini (1:51.202) were able to improve and secured the third and fourth positions on the grid behind Björk and Vervisch.
They were followed by Guerrieri (1:51.360), Nathanaël Berthon (1:51.456), Zsolt Dávid Szabó (1:51.523), Denis Dupont (1:51.564), Rob Huff (1:51.578) and Mehdi Bennani (1:51.675).
Some of the title contenders remained just off the top-ten: Pepe Oriola (11^th), Yann Ehrlacher (12^th), Yvan Muller (13^th) and Jean-Karl Vernay (15^th).
When the red flag was waved, the most disappointed driver was surely Team Mulsanne’s Kevin Ceccon who was on a very fast lap; the Italian was timed only 65 thousandths of a second slower than Björk at the end of the second sector, but he was forced to back off in the third.
The first race will start at 15:30 local time (9:30 CET).