Norbert Michelisz secures pole position for Race 1 in Hungary
Norbert Michelisz secured pole position in the Hyundai in front of his home crowd, breaking his own qualifying lap record from the TCR International Series last year for today’s World Touring Car Cup race.
YMR’s Yvan Muller set the early running, before he was pipped by both the BRC Racing Team Hyundais before the first ten minutes of the session were up, with Gabriele Tarquini going fastest of all with a 1:53.063, before team-mate Norbert Michelisz took over, improving on his lap record from this morning with a time of 1:52.644
Michelisz’s time held for the remainder of the session to give the Hungarian pole for his home race later today, while reigning WTCC champion Thed Björk made an improvement with ten minutes to go to move up to second, four-tenths of a second behind.
The session was held under full course yellow near the end after Campos Racing’s John Filippi hit the tyre stacks, soon after Thed Björk had made the same faux pas in his YMR Hyundai.
When the session went back to gree, all of the cars took to the track to have one last stab to improve, with Esteban Guerrieri making the most notable improvement, putting his Münnich Honda Civic second on the grid, with Björk and Tarquini lining up third and fourth for this afternoon’s race, while Benjamin Lessennes made a late improvement in the Boutsen Ginion Honda to go fifth fastest.
Lessennes however is due to serve a five-place penalty for not respecting the full course yellow in Free Practice 2, which promotes the Münnich Honda of Yann Ehrlacher to fifth for Race 1.
Rob Huff was the fastest of the Sébastien Loeb Racing Volkswagens in ninth, with Jean-Karl Vernay the best-placed Audi in 11th, and the top Cupra that of John Filippi in 16th.
A number of drivers had laps deleted for exceeding the track limits at Turn 11, including Attila Tassi, Zsolt Szabo, John Filippi, Mehdi Bennani and Esteban Guerrieri.
The race is scheduled for 15:25 CET.
