Photo: Jacques Letihon Photographe

Guillaume and Edouard Mondron win the qualifying race at Spa

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The Delahaye Racing pair of Guillaume and Edouard Mondron won the qualifying long race at Spa-Francorchamps, finishing ahead of the Boutsen Ginion Honda cars of Stéphane Lémeret and Tom Coronel, and Benjamin Lessennes and Enzo Guibbert.

The Mondron car had taken the lead of the race after a dramatic first lap, with incidents at the final chicane seeing the order shuffled, with Edouard Mondron emerging from the trouble in the lead ahead of Tom Coronel, with Sheldon van der Linde in third in the Comtoyou Audi RS 3 LMS.

Team WRT’s Denis Dupont was the first retirement of the race, caught up in the trouble at the final corner.

On lap three, Tom Coronel was passed for second by van der Linde’s Audi, with the South African closing in on race leader Mondron.

Van der Linde took the lead from Mondron shortly before the pit stop sequence started.

Rob Huff was one of the first to pit, giving the Team WRT team extra time to repair the damage sustained at the start of the race.

Van der Linde pitted early to hand the car over to Comini, while Edouard Mondron and Coronel stayed out right until the end of the 35 minute window, handing over the car to Guillaume Mondron and Stéphane Lémeret on lap 14.

By doing this, the two drivers got the jump on Comini, and then began a half-race long battle for the victory, with Mondron fending off reigning champion Lémeret lap after lap.

Meanwhile, Comini was falling back, with the two-time International Series champion losing his third place on lap 21 to Benjamin Lessennes in the #2 Boutsen Ginion Honda Civic.

Mondron went on to take the victory by just half a second ahead of Lémeret, with Lessennes completing the podium.

Comini and van der Linde finished fourth ahead of Matthieu Detry and Maxime Potty’s Team WRT Volkswagen, with Kevin Abbring and Aurélien Comte sixth in the DG Sport Peugeot 308.

Romain de Leval and Giacomo Altoè finished seventh in the Delahaye Volkswagen, while Bas Koeten Audi’s Stan Oord & Mike Morien finished eighth, Milo Racing’s Armand Fumal and Pierre-Yves Corthals ninth, with Rob Huff and Jean-Karl Vernay’s Volkswagen completing the top ten.

The fastest laps from the day’s two races set the grids for Sprint Races 1 and 3 tomorrow at 10:30 and 16:50 CET respectively, while the Mondron brothers now lead the championship with 25 points each.