Vernay on pole as Audi cars dominate at Wuhan

Jean-Karl Vernay set pole position for the WTCR Race 1 at the Wuhan Street Circuit in a Qualifying session dominated by the Audi RS3 LMS cars that filled five of the top six places.
Only Pepe Oriola was able to squeeze among them, posting the second fastest lap in his Cupra right at the end of the session that saw the first twenty cars covered by nine tenths of a second.
Vernay jumped on top of the timesheet with a lap of 1:22.846, ousting Denis Dupont who had been the first to complete a lap under the 1:23 mark (1:22.919). Eventually the young Belgian dropped to fourth, as his time was beaten by Nathanaël Berthon (1:22.909) and Oriola (1:22.890). Audi’s great result was completed by Gordon Shedden (1:22.989) and Frédéric Vervisch (1:23.004) who qualified fifth and sixth respectively, a bit more than one tenth off the pole.
Seventh, and first of the Honda drivers, was Yann Ehrlacher (1:23.186) who was followed by the surprising Kevin Ceccon in the Alfa Romeo Giulietta (1:23.201) and the Peugeot 308 cars of Aurélien Conte (1:23.250) and Mat’o Homola (1:23.256) that rounded off the top ten.
The Hyundai i30 N cars of the four top drivers in the standings struggled to set competitive times: Thed Björk and Yvan Muller qualified 17^th and 18^th, while the current points leader Gabriele Tarquini and Norbert Michelisz ranked 20^th and 24^th.
The session was briefly disrupted by the red flag twice: with ten minutes left, to put back in place a stack of tyres that had been touched by Shedden and then three minutes before the end after Berthon spun and stalled.
The first race will start at 16:00 local time (10:00 CET).