Tarquini and Michelisz dominate first Qualifying

BRC Racing’s teammates Gabriele Tarquini and Norbert Michelisz dominated today’s WTCR Qualifying session that determined the grid positions for tomorrow’s Race 1 at the Slovakia Ring.
Current championship leader Yvan Muller qualified third, making a 1-2-3 for the Hyundai i30 N cars.
It was quite an eventless session, with Michelisz and Tarquini setting two provisional fastest times of 2:09.664 and 2:09.747 on their first lap out after an early red flag for recovering John Filippi’s Cupra stranded in the gravel.
The rest of the field never got closer than nine tenths to the leading pair, but Thed Björk, Muller and Aurélien Comte stole each other the third place until Muller improved to 2:10.281 on his last lap, demoting Comte’s Peugeot 308 to fourth (2:10.326).
Seconds later, Tarquini stole pole position to his teammate clocking an impressive 2:09.312. Other late improvements came from Pepe Oriola (2:10.475) and Esteban Guerrieri (2:10.487) who qualified fifth and sixth. Björk eventually ranked seventh, but he will be dropped to the back of the grid following an engine change.
Jean-Karl Vernay, Tom Coronel and Yann Ehrlacher rounded off the top ten with local hero Mat’o Homola 11^th.
The first race will start tomorrow at 12:00 (CET).